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Niels Schneider

Actor
French-Canadian actor Niels Schneider, born in Paris in 1987, first gained stage experience in Quebec before starting his film career. He garnered international attention for his role in Xavier Dolan's film *Heartbeats* (2010), for which he was honored with the Trophée Chopard at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. For his performance in the thriller *Dark Inclusion* (2016), he received the César Award for Most Promising Actor in 2017. His versatile work also includes films like *An Impossible Love* (2018) and the series *Of Money and Blood* (2023).

Films

Spirit of Ecstasy

Spirit of Ecstasy

By Héléna Klotz

2023 | 95 min | Drama

Driven by an abusive father to provide for her younger siblings, Jeanne Francoeur enters the ruthless world of finance to secure their future.

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Black Venus

Black Venus

2010 | 165 min | Drama

Saartjie Baartman is forced by her slave master Cesar to leave her home in South Africa in order to be exhibited in Europe as a human attraction. In London, she is presented as the “Hottentot Venus” to a sensation-hungry audience – humiliated, abused and robbed of her dignity. But her hope for a better life remains unbroken. She later ends up in Paris, where she is initially celebrated as an exotic curiosity, but then increasingly becomes the object of pseudo-scientific desire. Her body becomes a ...

Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague

2025 | 106 min | Biography

Paris, 1959. Jean-Luc Godard is determined to make his first feature after years of writing about cinema alongside François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and other young critics. With Jean-Paul Belmondo and American star Jean Seberg in front of the camera, Breathless begins to take shape through an unconventional shoot driven by improvisation and Godard's determination to break established rules. Richard Linklater recreates the making of one of the defining films of the French New Wave in the style of ...

Venus

Venus

2017 | 95 min | Comedy

Sid has been under pressure from his family for a long time to finally marry a nice Indian girl and have children. When he finally comes out to his family as a woman, 14-year-old Ralph appears out of nowhere and claims to be Sid's son. In her feature film debut VENUS, Canadian director Eisha Marjara tells the story of Sid, a trans woman of Indian descent who, in the midst of her transition, suddenly finds herself confronted with the role of parent. Ralph, a bright teenager, accepts Sid's new identity ...

What Are We Waiting For?

What Are We Waiting For?

2016 | 119 min | Documentary

A small French village on the border to Germany takes steps to transition into the post-oil era in a country that is heavily dependent on nuclear power. How did they do it and which steps worked out best? Journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin shot the film over four seasons in a crucial year in which almost the entire transition program was completed. At the initiative of the city of Ungersheim, a participatory democracy program entitled "21 Actions for the 21st Century" was launched in ...

Mother and Son

Mother and Son

2022 | 117 min | Drama

At the end of the 1980s, a mother and her two sons set foot on French soil for the first time. The hope of a better life leads them from the Ivory Coast to the suburbs of Paris—a place that offers both promise and disillusionment. Over three chapters, a family history unfolds that tells of new beginnings, motherly love, friction, and maturation. While the sons search for their way between conformity, rejection, and self-assertion, the mother struggles with social stereotypes, isolation, and her ...

A Violent Life

A Violent Life

2017 | 113 min | Drama

Despite the death threat hanging over his head, Stéphane decides to return to Corsica to attend the funeral of his best friend and comrade in arms, Christophe, murdered the day before. It’s an opportunity for Stéphane to reminisce about the events of the 1990s, that led him, a cultured petty bourgeois from Bastia, to move from small crime onto political radicalization and the underground movement. Caught up in a decade old conflict between native Corsicans and immigrants from mainland France, Stéphane ...

The Nature of Love

The Nature of Love

2023 | 112 min | Comedy

Between dinner parties, lectures, and cultivated stagnation, Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) has been living in a “sensible” relationship with Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume) for years—conformist, intellectual, functional. But when handyman Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) shows up at her construction site, her worldview is shaken. Incompatible lifestyles collide: academic pretense meets physical presence, bourgeois routines meet anarchic lust. What begins as an affair becomes a radical questioning ...

Nobody's Hero

Nobody's Hero

2022 | 100 min | Drama

Clermont-Ferrand, central France. Médéric (35) meets Isadora, a married sex worker, and falls in love with her. When a terrorist attack occurs in the city center, Selim, a young homeless man, causes a wave of paranoia by seeking refuge in Médéric's building. Médéric, who sympathizes with Selim and is completely smitten with Isadora, suddenly finds his life in turmoil... The focus is on a man who is reluctantly drawn into the life of a young woman after she seeks his help. The seemingly chance encounter ...

L'amour / La mort

L'amour / La mort

2022 | 93 min | Documentary

Love can be overwhelming, fulfilling, but also destructive. It can connect, but also uproot. In the midst of these contradictions, there are people who have been shaped by intense relationships and profound losses. Their stories reflect the inextricable connection between love and death – two sides of the same coin. But how do you cope with the pain when what once gave you support suddenly disappears? The film L'AMOUR / LA MORT by Ramón Gieling is a poetic reflection on the limits and immortality ...

Miss Impossible

Miss Impossible

2016 | 89 min | Drama

Aurore is thirteen years old and unhappy. She thinks her parents are complete failures. Sophie, her little sister, is the most annoying model child ever, and school is boring anyway. Until she gets the chance to join a rock band. Aurore had what you might call a best friend, Lola, but she managed to fall out with her. Last year she had a boyfriend, but Maxime is just a bore. School is a disaster because even though she is repeating her seventh year, her grades are terrible. As she says to her parents, ...

A Violent Desire for Joy

A Violent Desire for Joy

2018 | 75 min | Drama

Far from the epicenter of the French Revolution, the monastery in Provence is seized by the revolutionary troops. The new concepts Gabriel learns through the forced cohabitation between monks and soldiers do not leave him cold. He has to make a decision between the old and the new. "The fact that Schneider can explore relatively complex ideas with just a few actors is a testament to his cinematic skill and creative talent. Indeed, the director doesn't seem to need much else to explore complicated ...

1986

1986

2019 | 77 min | Drama

Elena is a student in Minsk making illegal deals in the Chernobyl death zone to save her father from going to prison. She is in an intense but increasingly destructive love affair with Viktor. When her father is arrested for illegal metal trading and tax evasion, in order to continue his business, she has to keep traveling to the Chernobyl restricted zone. She is fascinated by the deceptive beauty, but soon her life seems contaminated by a destructive force. "A very potent film, both dramaturgically ...