Valérie Donzelli
Valérie Donzelli (born 2 March 1973) is a French actress, filmmaker and screenwriter. She has directed five feature films and two short films since 2008, including the film Declaration of War (2011).
Works
Rapaces
A father and daughter : Samuel, a journalist, and Ava, his intern, cover the murder of a girl attacked with acid for their magazine. Struck by the brutality of this murder, as well as by his daughter’s interest in the case, Samuel decides to conduct an independent investigation, without the knowledge of his editorial staff, and discovers disturbing similarities with the murder of another woman...
Release Date:2025-07-02
The Musicians
Astrid Thompson finally succeeds in fulfilling her father's dream: to bring together four Stradivarius for a unique concert, eagerly expected by music lovers around the world. But Lise, George, Peter and Apolline, the four virtuosos recruited for the occasion, are incapable of playing together. The rehearsals are one ego crisis after another. With no solution in sight, Astrid decides to go and find the only person who, in her eyes, can still save the event: Charlie Beaumont, the composer of the score.
Release Date:2025-05-07
Character:Astrid Carlson
Rue du Conservatoire
In 1996 I took the conservatory exam. I missed it. A year ago I was asked to do a masterclass on acting in cinema. I went there. I met a lively, joyful and passionate youth. Among my students there was Clémence. The following year, she asked me to film their last show. I felt her urgency and the fear she had of leaving this mythical place. So I accepted. By filming this youth, I revisited mine.
Release Date:2024-09-18
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Character:Self
Vote Count:3
This Life of Mine
Barbie, once an attractive, devoted mother and partner, faces newfound challenges as she turns 55, descending into darkness, violence, and absurdity while grappling with her identity, relationships, and life's complexities.
Release Date:2024-09-18
Character:La soeur de Barbie
Vote Count:10
Making Of
Simon, a well-known French filmmaker, starts shooting his next film. A story about workers fighting to protect their factory from being relocated. But nothing goes as planned... His producer Viviane wants to rewrite the ending and is threatening to cut the budget; his own crew goes on strike; his personal life is in shambles; and to make things worse, his lead actor Alain is an egocentric jerk. Joseph, an extra who wants to get into the film industry, agrees to direct the making of and shoot the behind-the-scenes. He takes his role very seriously and starts following around the crew, capturing all this mess... What follows is proof that the making of can sometimes be far better than the film itself!
Release Date:2024-01-10
Character:Alice
Vote Count:115
Just the Two of Us
When Blanche meets Grégoire, she thinks she has found the one. The ties that bind them grow quickly, and a passionate affair ensues. Together, they relocate. For Blanche, far from her family, from her twin sister, Rose, a new life begins. But little by little, she finds herself caught in the grip of a deeply possessive and dangerous man.
Release Date:2023-05-24
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:283
Azuro
It’s summer, the heat is overwhelming and the weather is out of whack. A group of friends are enjoying their yearly holiday in their favorite little village, wedged between the sea and the mountains. As usual, they are bored and eat and drink a lot. They do not pay attention to the fire which progresses on the mountain nearby, nor to the world around them. But this year, a mysterious man arrives from the sea and shakes up their seemingly balanced existence...
Release Date:2022-03-30
Character:Sara
Vote Count:14
Nona and Her Daughters
Actor-turned-director Valérie Donzelli brings us Nona and Her Daughters, a delightful 30-minute dramedy series on the theme of motherhood. Nona, brought to life by the enchanting Miou-Miou (Going Places, Entre Nous) is a 70-year-old feminist. She’s madly in love with André and finally free of taking care of her daughters — 40-year-old triplets played by Virginie Ledoyen, Clotilde Hesme and Valérie Donzelli, herself. She adores her family, life is beautiful and she’s living it to the fullest… Until the day she discovers that she’s pregnant!
Release Date:2021-12-02
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Character:George
Episode Count:9
Vote Count:7
Hear Me Out
Antoine, a history teacher in his early 50s, learns that he has become very hard of hearing. Unable to own up to his handicap, he resigns himself to living in his bubble, even though his entourage finds his behavior increasingly odd. His encounter with Claire, widow and mother of a young girl who has stopped speaking, will lead him to open up to the world.
Release Date:2021-11-17
Character:Léna
Vote Count:95
Madeleine Collins
Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.
Release Date:2021-07-21
Character:Madeleine Reynal
Vote Count:133
Starring Grandma
Frankie Wallach, 25-year-old director, is fascinated by her grand-mother Julia, 94 years old, her death camp survivor story and her joyful personality. She wants to immortalize her as an heroine of fiction for her movie but it's without thinking about the other members of the family, who will want to be a part of it. At the Wallach's, everything is... FULL OF LOVE !
Release Date:2020-10-13
Character:Frankie (en rêve)
Vote Count:6
Notre Dame
Maud is an architect and a mother. Due to a misunderstanding, she wins the competition to refurbish the parvis of Notre-Dame. Torn between these responsibilities and love issues, she will go through an emotional storm.
Release Date:2019-12-18
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Character:Maud Crayon
Vote Count:94
Losing It
Roman loves Camille as much as he loves his two daughters. But he is hiding from all of them a serious problem of addiction, which could endanger his dearest. Does love have a chance to survive when trust is broken?
Release Date:2019-04-24
Character:L'avocate
Vote Count:100
Nox
A mother, herself retired from the police, embarks on an underground exploration of Paris to find her daughter, a missing investigator on a mission.
Release Date:2018-03-12
Character:Emma Delage
Episode Count:6
Vote Count:17
50 Days in the Desert
Documentary about the making of Les Chevaliers blancs, the film Lafosse worked on for seven weeks in the Sahara. A shooting period marked by unusual working methods and unexpected challenges.
Release Date:2016-01-09
Character:self
Call My Agent!
At a top Paris talent firm, agents scramble to keep their star clients happy—and their business afloat—after an unexpected crisis.
Release Date:2015-10-14
Character:Self
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:169
The White Knights
Jacques Arnault, head of Sud Secours NGO, is planning a high impact operation: he and his team are going to exfiltrate 300 orphan victims of the Chadian civil war and bring them to French adoption applicants. Françoise Dubois, a journalist, is invited to come along with them and handle the media coverage for this operation. Completely immersed in the brutal reality of a country at war, the NGO members start losing their convictions and are faced with the limits of humanitarian intervention.
Release Date:2015-10-13
Character:Françoise Dubois
Vote Count:41
A Stormy Summer Night
Pierre and Maria, a Parisian couple, travel to Spain with their daughter and her friend. When a violent storm hits they must settle for the night in a tiny hotel in a small Andalusian city. This small city has been the scene of a crime of passion. The police search the murderer, an immigrant worker. The whole city is aroused by this murderous act which roused resentment and a dangerous desire for vengeance...
Release Date:2015-10-07
Character:Louise
Vote Count:14
Marguerite & Julien
Julien and Marguerite de Ravalet, son and daughter of the Lord of Tourlaville, have loved each other tenderly since childhood. But as they grow up, their affection veers toward voracious passion.
Release Date:2015-09-30
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:81
Capitaine Marleau
Beneath her eccentric appearance, Captain Marleau is a formidable detective. Her Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap, her character, her unusual appearance, her humor, her unpredictable behavior--Captain Marleau is not your average gendarme. She never rushes an investigation; she becomes the investigation and relentlessly pursues the suspects.
Release Date:2015-09-15
Character:Christine de Menneval
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:32
Cinéast(e)s
Is there such a thing as strictly feminine cinema? Is it more difficult for a woman than for a man to direct a film? Is gender parity necessary in the industry? Actress and producer Julie GAYET and actor and director Mathieu BUSSON ask these questions to twenty French woman filmmakers, who face a camera together for the first time. After over an hour of lively, informal, spontaneous and funny interviews, it becomes obvious that these issues are still problematic and definitely worthy of a documentary. As Mia HANSEN-LØVE remarks, “In the eyes of the people, a woman’s film is always a woman’s film, while a man’s movie is simply… a movie”.
Release Date:2013-10-15
Character:Self
Opium
The frustrated loves of Jean Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet at the beginning of the 1920s. The death of Radiguet that sank Cocteau into opium. A story under the influence of drugs. A narrative in the spirit of Cocteau. And all this in a musical.
Release Date:2013-10-02
Character:Valentine Hugo
Vote Count:7
Just Love!
Silvia’s father grants her permission to meet Dorante, the man she’s promised to in marriage, by pretending to be her servant Lisette, who in turn will play the role of her mistress.
Release Date:2013-08-16
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:5
Longwave
It is April 1974 and Julie Dujonc-Renens, young feminist journalist and the cunning Joseph-Marie Cauvin, leading reporter for the Swiss radio, have been sent to Portugal to investigate Switzerland’s aid to poor countries. Sparks fly during the bus trip with Bob, sound engineer approaching retirement. The projects financed by Switzerland prove to be calamitous and the workers’ revolution that suddenly breaks out doesn’t help, obliging our heroes to disregard first the radio’s management, and then their own codes of conduct.
Release Date:2013-08-11
Character:Julie
Vote Count:34
The Big Bad Wolf
Once upon a time in 2012, three brothers lived happily. One day their mom fell into a coma. So Henri, Philippe, and Louis suddenly started wondering about the meaning of their lives and were swamped by a wave of existential doubts. An entirely new situation for this bourgeois trio in their forties, one which opened a door to the novel and indeed the forbidden... and to the big bad wolf!
Release Date:2013-06-27
Character:Nathalie
Vote Count:132
Hand in Hand
From the moment they meet - and against their will - Helene and Joachim begin a lovers' dance they are powerless to stop.
Release Date:2012-12-19
Department:Writing
Job:Screenplay
Character:Véro
Vote Count:53
Cap Nord
A party, musical love stories: head North, on a Northern Soul rhythm.
Release Date:2012-04-18
Vote Count:1
La Vie parisienne
Pierre and Marion, a couple of Parisien teachers, have a life regulated. When they meet Marion's childhood love, Remi, their life is lighten to a new day.
Release Date:2012-01-28
Department:Writing
Job:Idea
Declaration of War
Roméo and Juliette are two young actors. They fall in love at first sight, move in together and make a baby. A love story and the founding of a home like millions of others. Except that their little boy, Adam, behaves abnormally. The young parents try hard to persuade themselves that everything is okay but, with the passing of time, they cannot delude themselves anymore: their son has a problem. From now on, war is declared. A war against illness. A war against Death. A war against despair.
Release Date:2011-08-31
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Character:Juliette
Vote Count:193
The Art of Seduction
Jean-François is a psychoanalyst in love with one of his patients. When she decides to stop therapy, Jean-François at last feels free to seduce the woman. Paralyzed when in front of his object of love, Jean-François accumulates blunders of every kind. He hence turns to Julien, one his patients who is in therapy to overcome his compulsive-obsessive flirting disorder. It's a totally absurd initiative on Jean-François's part. But, even so...
Release Date:2011-07-27
Character:Estelle
Vote Count:13
Iris in Bloom
An 18-year-old beauty develops an attraction to an older photographer.
Release Date:2011-07-27
Character:Monika
Vote Count:5
Bachelor Days Are Over
Nervous about his upcoming wedding, a man faces temptation from another woman.
Release Date:2011-06-15
Character:Anna
Vote Count:20
Belleville Tokyo
Un couple se dirige vers un train en partance pour Venise. Sur le quai, Julien annonce à Marie qu’il part en rejoindre une autre et s’en va, la laissant seule à Paris, enceinte. Bouleversée, Marie se refuse à être victime de cette situation. Elle trouve du réconfort dans son travail auprès de ses deux « cow-boys » de patrons, Jean-Jacques et Jean-Loup, qui dirigent un cinéma du quartier latin spécialisé dans les films classiques américains…
Release Date:2011-06-01
Character:Marie Tourelle
Vote Count:10
The Queen of Hearts
In this musical take on everyday life, Adele is devastated after a painful breakup. Her distant cousin, Rachel, finds her a job and suggests that Adele sleep with other men to get over her heartbreak. The search begins, but Adele can’t escape the visage of her former lover….
Release Date:2009-01-24
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Character:Adèle
Vote Count:27
Il fait beau dans la plus belle ville du monde
Adèle, a thirty years old woman decides to contact Vidal, a musician she admires. He answers and she’s surprised. Messages are exchanged, a date is arranged. Adèle goes to the met, radiant with joy, but also worried : there’s a detail she forgot to mention, she’s pregnant.
Release Date:2008-02-12
Department:Writing
Job:Screenplay
Character:Adèle
Vote Count:1
The Infinite Present Ends
Based on a fictionalized 2015 memoir from psychiatric nurse Mary Dorsan, the text embeds within a teenage psychiatric ward over the course of a year, teasing out the complex bonds, challenges, frustrations and unexpected moments of grace shared between patients and caregivers.
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
À pied d’œuvre
Department:Directing
Job:Director
The Good Life
Desillussioned by life, Béa decides to commit suicide. She is interrupted by a phone call with a proposal of work for a financial tycoon. Far from the watchful eyes of her boss, she practices fraud, but it seems it gonna last not so long.
Release Date:2009-05-07
Character:Béa
Vote Count:15
What Love Means
The movie, for the most part, charts the AIDS epidemic in France from 1980 – present through the microcosm of a family, but particularly through their gay son Nicolas, who narrates the story.
Release Date:2008-03-26
Character:Nathalie
Vote Count:2
Capri
Release Date:2008-01-01
Abattoir
Marc works in a slaughterhouse. All day long, he operates a bandsaw. One day an accident occurs: the band breaks, slicing off Marc's left hand. Contrary to his wife's advice, Marc brings the dismembered hand back home.
Release Date:2007-09-21
Vote Count:1
The Man Who Wanted a Child
Alfred lives with his mother in a small village keeping chickens and selling eggs at the local market. He doesn't speak, except to his mother and to children. He has a girlfriend of sorts, although she shies away from any physical contact with her. But more than anything, Alfred wants a child. As natural fatherhood is out of the question he takes the next best option, and makes an application to adopt. With a very un-French lack of bureaucracy Alfred's adoptive son arrives, but turns out not to be the bouncing baby he was hoping for. [taken from London Film Festival 2006 catalogue]
Release Date:2007-03-21
Character:Suzanne
The Untouchable
After learning from her mother that her father lives in India, a young woman goes there to meet him for the first time.
Release Date:2006-12-06
Character:Actrice Théâtre
Vote Count:7
Odile...
An ordinary bakery beside a country road. Behind the counter stands Odile, so ordinary it hurts. One day, a gang of bikers stops in front of the bakery. The past will invade Odile's life, bringing with it her most violent memories. This confrontation slowly turns her life on its head.
Release Date:2006-07-01
Character:Odile
Vote Count:1
Passés troubles
A former police officer, Marc Lorca, sees his wife die from a terrible car accident, which occurred while he was driving. Previously alcoholic, Lorca seems to collapse under the weight of guilt. But a former colleague, Marianne Duriez, recently become a police captain, shows him that the accident is not accounted by any negligence on his part. The survey of experts has indeed revealed that the steering axis of the vehicle was sabotaged. Gradually, the suspect list is expanding. Lorca realizes he knows nothing of the past of his deceased wife, who was obviously part of a small extreme left group.
Release Date:2006-01-01
Character:Sophie Valatier
7 Years
A devoted young woman becomes ensnared in a web of sexuality and betrayal in Jean-Pascal Hattu’s consistently unpredictable and finely wrought character study. A vividly realistic psychosexual drama, the film’s sharp emotional honesty heralds a distinct new voice from a promising young director. Hattu soon reveals that Maite’s husband Vincent is in prison for an unspecified crime, and that she has promised to wait for him and attend to his laundry (if not his conjugal needs) during his incarceration. On one of her weekly visits, Maite meets Jean, an oddly inquisitive and boldly flirtatious prison warden, and soon the two commence a joyless affair. Seemingly smitten with Maite, Jean, in a gesture of kindness to his lover, eases up on her husband behind bars; the two become pals and even engage in some homoerotic shower talk. —Robert O’Shaughnessy
Release Date:2006-01-01
Character:Maïté
Vote Count:4
In His Hands
In Lille, Claire Gauthier is an ordinary married woman with a young daughter that works in an insurance company analyzing losses of insured properties. When the single veterinary Laurent Kessler claims damage in his basement caused by a flooding due to water leakage, Claire resolves the situation favorably for him. The weird Laurent visits Claire in her office successively, inviting her for drinks and lunch, and they get close to each other. Meanwhile, a serial killer is terrorizing Lille, killing women with a scalpel. Claire feels a great attraction for Laurent, who has an unusual behavior in her apartment. When Claire sees a scalpel in the pocket of Laurent's jacket, she fears him, but still loves him.
Release Date:2005-09-11
Character:Valérie
Vote Count:35
Time Has Come
In a time and place indeterminate a bandit has kidnapped Rixo Lomadis Bron’s daughter. Bron is a wealthy landowner who reigns over the shepherds of the Purple Mountain. The time has come when Rixo Lomadis Bron accuses Manjas-Kebir of killing his daughter and urges all the country’s inhabitants to track down the assassin. It’s the time when Radovan Remila Stoï, the land’s greatest warrior, rises up against this foolhardy act which has every chance of leading to war...
Release Date:2005-07-13
Character:Soniéra Noubi-Datch
Vote Count:7
Clara Sheller
Clara Sheller is a French television series created by Nicolas Mercier after the idea of Stéphanie Tchou-Cotta that was aired from 18 May 2005 to 3 December 2008 on France 2. The casting was completely changed between the first and second season, but the characters remained the same. The theme song was written by Mirwais and was called "Naive Song". In the US, Clara Sheller aired on Eurochannel in 2009. and on TV5Monde.
Release Date:2005-05-18
Character:Jeanne
Episode Count:6
Vote Count:6
The Best Day of My Life
Not too excited Arthur asks marriage Lola. What should have been a quiet ceremony evolves in something bigger, expensive and overwhelming as family is involved. The organization of the best day of their lives threatens to destroy them.
Release Date:2005-01-05
Character:Eleonore
Vote Count:13
The Necrophile
A story of a very ordinary man who just happens to be necrophile. (He is also like to eat cockroaches.) Problems begins when his pretty orphan cousin came to live with him...
Release Date:2004-07-13
Character:La prostituée
Vote Count:7
Frédérique amoureuse
In what way is the life of a woman with a reliable husband and two nice kids transformed when what she expects most from life is her next orgasm with her lover ?
Release Date:2004-05-09
Vote Count:1
Who Killed Bambi?
Isabelle, a beautiful nursing student, is starting her internship at a prestigious hospital. She meets Dr. Philip there, feels atracted to him from the beggining and starts suffering from strange fainting; so he calls her Bambi: her legs don't support her. Patients mysteriously start to dissappear from their rooms; so Bambi and Dr. Philip start a cat vs. mouse paranoid game, in order to catch the probable killer.
Release Date:2003-12-24
Character:Nathalie
Vote Count:34
The Vanishing Lion
An adventure of three characters: Clarisse, a psychic’s apprentice, Lazare, who works at the Parisian catacombs, and the bronze statue of a lion at the Denfert-Rochereau (in the 14th arrondissement). Clarisse and Laraze meet daily, but one day Lazare disappears and the lion disappears as well!
Release Date:2003-03-24
Character:La Cliente en Pleurs
Vote Count:16
Motus
Josephine, married and mother of two children, is gradually moving away from her husband Antoine. She rediscovers physical pleasure in the arms of a lover.
Release Date:2003-03-15
Character:Antoine's intern
Vote Count:1
Right Under My Eyes
Young computer enthusiast Liam runs a website streaming video of his every action captured on a webcam. He lives a reclusive life, temporarily staying in a friend’s apartment in Paris until waitress Alison and her British husband, James, move in.
Release Date:2002-06-23
Character:Alison
Vote Count:2
Tender Souls
Jacques, 50-something bachelor painter and great seducer, is about to receive the charming Claire for dinner. Broke but clever, Jacques concocted a sumptuous meal. Everything looks great when, suddenly, a door slams and turns the evening into a fiasco. Jacques will have to change his plans, play the unexpected. However, that evening, it is the unexpected that will play with him.
Release Date:2001-12-05
Character:Emilie
Vote Count:2
Martha... Martha
Having received a frosty reception when visiting her parents, Martha drags her husband Reymond and infant daughter Lise to Spain, to renew her acquaintance with her estranged sister Marie. After a quarrel, Marthe and her family return to France, where the young mother shows signs of increasing mental instability. Abandoning her family, Marthe goes to town to get drunk and ends up being raped. With Marthe in a psychiatric hospital, Reymond is left to take care of Lise alone whilst struggling to make a living selling second hand clothes in an open-air market. When Marthe leaves hospital, Reymond takes her and Lise to a holiday home in the country. But Martha’s illness is far from cured…
Release Date:2001-10-03
Character:Martha
Vote Count:5
Jours de chance
Le chien, le chat et le cibachrome
Samuel goes to Nice to pass the exam of the School of Fine Arts. He is accompanied by Nordine, uncultivated in art who takes some holidays.
Release Date:2001-02-01
Character:Candidate painter
Come Undone
Story of two gorgeous, young French boys who begin a passionate relationship that boils over and threatens to destroy both their lives. Shy 18-year-old Mathieu is on summer vacation in the south of France. He spends his days lazily sunning himself at the beach, until he spies the handsome Cédric and falls in love.
Release Date:2000-06-07
Vote Count:71
Cold Lands
A young Frenchman of Arab descent, Djamel, becomes convinced that his long-lost father is a rich factory owner in Grenoble. When the man coldly rejects him, Djamel plots a revenge that will implicate the man's closeted gay son.
Release Date:1999-12-01
Character:Isabelle
Vote Count:7