Olivier Assayas

Suspended Time

April 2020––Lockdown. Etienne, a film director, and his brother Paul, a music journalist, are confined together in their childhood home with their new partners Morgane and Carole. Every room, every object, reminds them of their childhood, and the memories of the absents––their parents, their neighbors… This compels them to measure the distance that separates them from each other and the roots they share, those of their ground zero. As the world around them is becoming increasingly unsettling, unreality, and even a disturbing strangeness, invades their daily gestures and actions.

Release Date: 2024-06-19

Department: Production

Job: Producer

Vote Count: 15

Passages

Tomas and Martin are a gay couple living in Paris whose marriage is thrown into crisis when Tomas impulsively begins a passionate affair with young schoolteacher Agathe. But when Martin begins an affair of his own, Tomas must confront life decisions he may be unprepared—or unwilling—to deal with.

Release Date: 2023-06-28

Department: Crew

Job: Thanks

Vote Count: 196

The Emma Bovary Trial

On January 31, 1857, the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) took his place in the dock for contempt of public morality and religion. The accused, the real one, is, through him, Emma Bovary, heroine with a thousand faces and a thousand desires, guilty without doubt of an unforgivable desire to live.

Release Date: 2021-09-15

Department: Crew

Job: Thanks

Vote Count: 4

Wasp Network

Havana, Cuba, 1990. René González, an airplane pilot, unexpectedly flees the country, leaving behind his wife Olga and his daughter Irma, and begins a new life in Miami, where he becomes a member of an anti-Castro organization.

Release Date: 2020-01-29

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 384

Non-Fiction

Alain, a successful Parisian publisher struggling to adapt to the digital revolution, has major doubts about the new manuscript of Léonard, one of his long-time authors — another work of auto-fiction recycling his love affair with a minor celebrity. Selena, Alain’s wife, a famous stage actress, is of the opposite opinion.

Release Date: 2018-10-11

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 238

Based on a True Story

Delphine is the author of an autobiographical novel that has become a bestseller. Exhausted by the promotional tour, just when she feels out of place, paralyzed by the idea of having to start writing again, she meets Elle, a young, attractive, intelligent, intuitive woman who seems to understand her better than anyone.

Release Date: 2017-11-01

Department: Writing

Job: Screenplay

Vote Count: 505

Personal Shopper

Maureen, mid-20s, is a personal shopper for a media celebrity. The job pays for her stay in Paris, a city she refuses to leave until she makes contact with her twin brother who previously died there. Her life becomes more complicated when a mysterious person contacts her via text message.

Release Date: 2016-12-14

Department: Writing

Job: Screenplay

Vote Count: 1248

Clouds of Sils Maria

A veteran actress comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable reflection of herself when she agrees to take part in a revival of the play that launched her career 20 years earlier.

Release Date: 2014-08-20

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 770

Something in the Air

During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.

Release Date: 2012-11-14

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 88

Carlos

The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the OPEC headquarters in 1975 before being caught by the French police.

Release Date: 2010-07-07

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 213

Summer Hours

After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.

Release Date: 2008-03-05

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 154

Eldorado

Olivier Assayas’ Eldorado is a riveting documentary chronicling the efforts of Ballet Preljocaj to choreograph an otherworldly icon of 21st century music: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ethereal Sonntags-Abschied.

Release Date: 2008-02-25

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 3

To Each His Own Cinema

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Release Date: 2007-10-31

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 141

Boarding Gate

A beautiful woman, Sandra, seduces a wealthy businessman, Miles Rennburg. Little does he realise that she has been sent to kill him at the behest of her boyfriend/crime partner, Lester. Controlling all this is Sue, Lester's wife.

Release Date: 2007-08-22

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 102

Paris Je T'aime

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Release Date: 2006-06-21

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 774

Quartier des Enfants-Rouges

Release Date: 2006-06-21

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Noise

Footage from 2005’s Festival Art Rock in Saint-Brieuc, France, featuring Metric, Sonic Youth, Jeanne Balibar, and other acts.

Release Date: 2006-06-15

Department: Camera

Job: Director of Photography

Vote Count: 5

Clean

After she ends up in prison and loses custody of her son, a woman struggles to assimilate outside her former life and remain clean long enough to regain custody of her son.

Release Date: 2004-09-01

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 70

Demonlover

A French corporation goes head-to-head with an American web media company for the rights to a 3-D manga pornography studio, resulting in a power struggle that culminates in violence and espionage.

Release Date: 2002-11-06

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

Vote Count: 105

Sentimental Destinies

In late nineteenth century Charante, Protestant minister Jean Barnery causes local disquiet when he arranges a separation from his obsessive wife. He and his lover keep their love strong as the world changes around them.

Release Date: 2000-07-12

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 25

HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Entry on Taiwanese new-wave filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien for French television's "Cinéma, de notre temps" series, directed by Olivier Assayas.

Release Date: 1999-12-15

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 6

Late August, Early September

A book editor juggles relationships with two women while coping with his best friend's terminal illness.

Release Date: 1999-02-10

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 43

Alice and Martin

Martin, the illegitimate son of an industrialist and a hairdresser, was sent to live with his wealthy father in the countryside as a young boy. Alice is a musician living with Martin's half-brother in Paris. When Martin shows up at Alice's door after fleeing his father's home under troubled circumstances, their lives become intertwined.

Release Date: 1998-10-23

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

Vote Count: 28

Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung

Experimental short made by Olivier Assayas for Fondation of Contemporary Art and starring Maggie Cheung.

Release Date: 1997-01-01

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 3

Irma Vep

Hong Kong action diva Maggie Cheung comes to France when a past-his-prime director casts her in a remake of the silent classic Les Vampires. Clad in a rubber catsuit and unable to speak a word of French, Cheung finds herself adrift in the insanity of the film industry…

Release Date: 1996-10-01

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 214

Cold Water

An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.

Release Date: 1994-07-06

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 47

A New Life

In a shock after her mother’s sudden death, warehouse forklift driver Tina seeks out the rich, enigmatic businessman father she has never known and discovers a half-sister, Lise.

Release Date: 1993-10-13

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 8

Paris Awakens

Adrien is a nineteen year old who has not seen his father, Clément, for four years. Adrien returns home and the two try to repair their relationship. Clément lives with Louise, a twenty-something woman who wants to be an actress. Adrien starts a flirtatious relationship with Louise, which strains his newfound bond with Clément.

Release Date: 1991-11-27

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 13

Lovely Child

Maria is a sweet child. She hasn’t father and doesn’t like her mother. She has a boyfriend, A bandit who would like to change his class.

Release Date: 1990-05-04

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

Vote Count: 3

Winter's Child

Feckless aspiring architect Stéphane leaves his pregnant girlfriend for theater designer Sabine; Sabine in turn vainly attempts to overcome her violent obsession with an actor in her theater company. A game of emotional chutes and ladders ensues.

Release Date: 1989-06-14

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 10

Broken April

A 100-year-old family feud in Albania continues to target men for vengeful execution in this somber drama.

Release Date: 1987-12-09

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

Disorder

Three young friends steal some music equipment for their struggling post-punk band and, in a panic, kill the shop’s owner. Assayas’ debut feature examines, with characteristic restraint and acuity, the psychological fallout as the band unravels—and each of its members grapple with their own feelings of guilt, paranoia, and despair.

Release Date: 1986-11-12

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 19

Scene of the Crime

In the woods, a 13-year-old boy is grabbed by an escaped convict and told to bring money later that day. The boy does as he's told, only to be attacked by the convict's partner. A murder ensues, and through happenstance, the murderer and the boy's mother form an alliance. All this takes place in four days during which the boy has his first communion, his separated parents face each other amidst grandmother's hopes they'll reunite, the grandfather just wants to go fishing, the school's chaplain complains about the boy's behavior, and the convicts' shared girlfriend comes, gun in hand, to help them escape to Tangier. The mother's surprising decisions complete the story.

Release Date: 1986-05-16

Department: Writing

Job: Screenplay

Vote Count: 44

Rendez-vous

Nina is a young, carefree actress who arrives in Paris searching for her big break. There, she finds drama both on- and offstage as she becomes involved with three men: a mild-mannered real-estate agent who offers her stability, a bad-boy actor who lives dangerously on the edge, and an intense theater director who casts her in a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” As opening night approaches, the emotional extremes of Nina’s love life fuel her art.

Release Date: 1985-05-15

Department: Writing

Job: Screenplay

Vote Count: 69

Laissé inachevé à Tokyo

A young woman travels to Japan to write a novel.

Release Date: 1982-08-13

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 10

Idol's Eye

A thief unknowingly steals a blue diamond from Chicago mob boss Tony Accardo, setting off a war between the two men as they both try to keep one step ahead of the FBI.

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Jean-Pierre Léaud: The Child of Cinema

A portrait of the legendary actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, icon of the French New Wave and closely linked to the work of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard.

Release Date: 2024-09-04

Department: Crew

Job: Thanks

Character: Self - Filmmaker

Vote Count: 3

Art-House America: Austin Film Society

Founded by Richard Linklater in 1985 as a screening series dedicated to bringing experimental and art cinema to the city of Austin, Texas, the Austin Film Society has grown into a cornerstone of the city's creative community - while remaining true to its edgy, eclectic roots.

Release Date: 2023-05-01

Character: Self

Lars Eidinger – To Be or Not To Be

Lars Eidinger is one of Germany’s most talented and versatile actors with his love of improvisation and physical acting style. This documentary seeks to dispel some of the mystique surrounding this exceptional actor’s unique art and also provide an exciting insight into the world of theatre and filmmaking.

Release Date: 2023-03-23

Character: Self

Vote Count: 5

Irma Vep

Mira is an American movie star disillusioned by her career and a recent breakup, who comes to France to star as “Irma Vep” in a remake of the French silent film classic, “Les Vampires.” Set against the backdrop of a lurid crime thriller, Mira struggles as the distinctions between herself and the character she plays begin to blur and merge.

Release Date: 2022-06-06

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

Episode Count: 8

Vote Count: 116

Bergman Island

An English-German filmmaking couple retreat to Fårö for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Ingmar Bergman. As the summer and their screenplays advance, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur against the backdrop of the Island's wild landscape.

Release Date: 2021-07-14

Department: Crew

Job: Thanks

Vote Count: 219

Corona Film Club

Documentary about filmmaker and film lover Stig Björkman during the pandemic year of 2020 when he stay in touch with his friends over his laptop.

Release Date: 2021-05-05

Character: Self

Vote Count: 3

Gérard Blain : adultes, je vous hais

A portrait of Gérard Blain, actor and film-maker, an unclassifiable artist, a lard-head and a free spirit. This documentary, packed with eyewitness accounts and archive footage, looks back at his brief career as an actor, his stormy relationship with the Nouvelle Vague and his uncompromising work as a filmmaker. Above all, it paints the portrait of a man with an irreducible character who claims to have always hated adults and their cynicism, ever since his damaged childhood.

Release Date: 2019-12-31

Character: Self - director, critique

SY NYC 12/12/01: The Demonlover Sessions

A fly-on-the-wall documentary about the recording of the music score by Sonic Youth.

Release Date: 2019-05-27

Character: Self

André Téchiné: A Passion for Cinema

A walk through the career of French filmmaker André Téchiné, from his own point of view and that of those who worked with him: Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart, Juliette Binoche and Sandrine Kiberlain, among others.

Release Date: 2019-04-03

Character: Self - Filmmaker

Vote Count: 2

Searching for Ingmar Bergman

A meaningful account of the personal and professional life of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) that explores his film legacy, with interviews with his closest collaborators and a new generation of filmmakers.

Release Date: 2018-07-12

Character: Self - Filmmaker

Vote Count: 14

Aware, Anywhere

30 years after his debut, Olivier Assayas is back in New York to present his latest feature film shot in Paris, London, Prague and Oman - This portrait of the filmmaker is part of the collection « Cinéma, de notre temps » created by Janine Bazin and André S. Labarthe.

Release Date: 2017-11-10

Character: Himself

Vote Count: 2

Luchino Visconti: Between Truth and Passion

Forty years after his death, this documentary pays tribute to one of the major filmmakers of Italian cinema, to an original work that continues to inspire today's cinema. Coming from one of the greatest families of the Italian aristocracy, he could have been a rich and cultured man, living in opulence and idleness, but Luchino wanted a different destiny. This is the story that director Elisabeth Kapnist and Christian Dumais-Lvowski wanted to tell. Count Visconti di Modrone wears the clothes of a legend that he never stopped shaping throughout his life. This documentary reconstructs the fabric of a brilliant life, dedicated to art; theater, opera, and cinema. This artistic work is also that of a committed man, who was a fellow traveler of the Communist Party, and who resisted fascism.

Release Date: 2016-11-15

Character: Self - Movie Director

Vote Count: 1

La Page blanche

1972. Gilles and Christine are a young couple who is struggling with family difficulties and growing up. Christine convinces Gilles to run away together to a hypothetical community of artists living in the south of France, in Lozère. This TV movie is the basis of Olivier Assayas' feature "L'Eau froide".

Release Date: 1994-11-11

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Rectangle: Deux Chansons de Jacno

Two minimalist music videos that Assayas shot for French electro-pop star Jaco, Rectangle and Anne cherchait l'amour (featuring Elli Medeiros)

Release Date: 1980-01-01

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 3

Nuit féline

A César award nominated short feature.

Release Date: 1978-01-01

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

The Wizard of the Kremlin

Russia, in the early 1990’s is the aftermath of the USSR’s collapse. In a new world that promises freedom and flirts with chaos, a young artist-turned-TV producer, Vadim Baranov, unexpectedly becomes the spin doctor of a promising member of the FSB (ex-KGB), Vladimir Putin.

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Room 999

In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, Alice Rohrwacher and more) the same question: “is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”

Release Date: 2023-10-05

Character: Self

Vote Count: 5

The Cinematograph: Birth of an Art

Throughout the 19th century, imaginative and visionary artists and inventors brought about the advent of a new look, absolutely modern and truly cinematographic, long before the revolutionary invention of the Lumière brothers and the arrival of December 28, 1895, the historic day on which the first cinema performance took place.

Release Date: 2021-10-17

Character: Self - Filmmaker

Vote Count: 6

Truffaut / Godard, scénario d'une rupture

An inquiry into two of the most influencial French filmakers friendship and feud.

Release Date: 2016-05-12

Character: Self

Vote Count: 4

Hitchcock/Truffaut

Filmmakers discuss the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock and the book “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (“Le cinéma selon Hitchcock”), written by François Truffaut and published in 1966.

Release Date: 2015-09-05

Character: Self

Vote Count: 243

Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema

With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.

Release Date: 2014-10-01

Character: Self

Vote Count: 16

Professor Goudet's Lessons

Stéphane Goudet is all over the Tati box-set as the preeminent Tati scholar, so it is only fitting that he conclude the disc with a half hour lecture that concludes the themes and methods of the filmmaker.

Release Date: 2013-04-06

Character: Self

A Special Day

At the 60th anniversary of Cannes Film Festival, 34 famous directors are followed by camera.

Release Date: 2012-05-16

Character: Self

Vote Count: 2

Il était une fois... « La règle du jeu »

Release Date: 2011-09-09

Character: Self (cinéaste)

Carlos

The story of the Venezuelan Ilich Ramirez Sanchez known as "Carlos", who was, for almost twenty years, one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.

Release Date: 2010-05-19

Department: Writing

Job: Script Editor

Episode Count: 3

Vote Count: 52

… But Film Is My Mistress

Guided by Liv Ullmann and with commentaries from a number of prominent filmmakers for whom Bergman is and remains an important influence - such as Woody Allen, Olivier Assayas, Bernardo Bertolucci, Arnaud Desplechin, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese and Lars von Trier, the film provides a vivid portrait of the artist who in each new project found a challenge for himself and for the people he worked with - both actors and colleagues behind the camera.

Release Date: 2010-05-12

Character: Self

Vote Count: 12

Inventory

A documentary by Olivier Gonard, shot partly in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, that examines Olivier Assayas' film Summer Hours, and its approach to art.

Release Date: 2008-01-01

Character: Interviewee

In the Mood for Doyle

Christopher Doyle is one of the best known and most acclaimed directors of photography in world cinema. Born in Australia, he sees himself as an Asian citizen rather than a Westerner. His artistic contribution to the films of Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Jimou and Fruit Chan films, among others, is indisputable. Filmed in DV and Super8, this documentary is a kind of wild and stylized road movie -- from Bangkok to Hong Kong, via New York. The camera follows this eccentric and outrageous artist as he gives us his thoughts on his past and present work. From the recent sets of Invisible Waves by Thailand's Pen ek Ratanaruang, and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, to the locations in Hong Kong where he shot some of his most famous pictures, such as In The Mood for Love and Dumplings, Chris Doyle talks about his cinematic fascination for Asian culture.

Release Date: 2007-08-30

Character: Himself

Vote Count: 2

Upsurge

A thief with an ambiguous relationship to a young woman steals her purse during a screening.

Release Date: 2007-05-20

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Making of 'Demonlover'

Twenty years after David Cronenberg prophesied the dark side of the Internet age in Videodrome, acclaimed French filmmaker Olivier Assayas updated it for the New Millennium in his startlingly prescient Demonlover, a chilling exploration of the nexus between sex and violence available at the click of a button.

Release Date: 2003-09-09

Character: Self

All the Boys and Girls of Their Time

Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge... is a French anthology tv series. Filmmakers were given the opportunity to portray an episode about the coming of age of young people during one of the past few decades, accompanied by music of that period.

Release Date: 1994-10-21

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Episode Count: 9

Vote Count: 1

François Truffaut: Stolen Portraits

Twenty-six people - including two daughters, an ex-wife, his last lover, actors, fellow directors and writers, a neighbor, and boyhood friends - talk about François Truffaut. They discuss his attitudes toward wealth, his early writings about cinema, the undercurrent of violence in his films and his personality, the way he used and altered events in his life when making films, his search for a father (both artistic and biological), his relationship with his mother, the scenes in his films that cause a squirm of embarrassment, and his ultimate mysticism. Clips from a dozen of his films are included.

Release Date: 1993-05-14

Character: Self

Vote Count: 7

L'Unique

A famous rock singer is being overtaken. Vox, the album and live producer of the singer, prepares a real revolution with the help of a scientist. With holography, they would like to create the perfect copy of the star.

Release Date: 1986-02-26

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

Passage secret

In a somewhat deflated story of robbery and deception set against the rooftops and byways of Paris, a group of enterprising petty thieves take advantage of the dog days of August to burglarize vacated apartments. At this time of year, all Parisiens are on vacation elsewhere, and the city is invaded by tourists on vacation from their own cities. In this mass rearrangement of the European population, the thieves get away with their looting until they run into an architect who catches them in the act. But his morals are nothing to brag about, as he gets more involved in what they are doing and wants some of their take. He is also smitten with one of the down-and-out women the thieves have been supporting (Dominque Laffin). As in so many French dramas, these conflicting relationships are doomed to be resolved only by tragedy.

Release Date: 1985-07-24

Department: Writing

Job: Writer

Vote Count: 1

Winston Tong In Studio

Winston Tong and collaborators are interviewed during a busy day at the recording studio.

Release Date: 1984-10-10

Department: Directing

Job: Director

Vote Count: 4

Scopitone

Release Date: 1980-04-09

Department: Writing

Job: Writer