Germany: A New History

In one concise volume, Hagen Schulze brilliantly conveys the full sweep of German history, from the days of the Romans to the fall of the Berlin Wall. A story two thousand years in the making, it rings with battle, murmurs with intrigue, and hums with the music of everyday life. This richly various legacy, often overshadowed and distorted by the nation's recent past, offers a hopeful answer.

Luxembourg: History, Landscape, and Traditions

By Stéphane Bern

Discover the magic of Luxembourg with this homage to the country's rich history, diverse culture, and beautiful landscapes.

Steeped in history, the small baroque country of Luxembourg is one of the few remaining hidden treasures of Europe. With a 1,000-year-old heritage, including the old city fortifications and ruins that are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this landlocked nation--best known as a center for banking and telecommunications--offers a surprisingly rich diversity of natural wonders.

This volume leads the reader through Luxembourg's picturesque countryside, unveiling the nation's fascinating history, culture, and geography, and includes a detailed guide to the best cultural, gastronomic, and historical experiences, along with an agenda of annual events and festivities.

Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

By Krista Halverson

This is a first-ever history of the legendary bohemian bookstore in Paris. It interweaves essays and poetry from dozens of writers associated with the shop--Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Ethan Hawke, Robert Stone and Jeanette Winterson, among others--with hundreds of never-before-seen archival pieces. It includes photographs of James Baldwin, William Burroughs and Langston Hughes, plus a foreword by the celebrated British novelist Jeanette Winterson and an epilogue by Sylvia Whitman, the daughter of the store’s founder, George Whitman.

The book has been edited by Krista Halverson, director of the newly founded Shakespeare and Company publishing house.

The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000

By Mark Cioc

The Rhine River is Europe's most important commercial waterway, channeling the flow of trade among Switzerland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In this innovative study, Mark Cioc focuses on the river from the moment when the Congress of Vienna established a multinational commission charged with making the river more efficient for purposes of trade and commerce in 1815. He examines the engineering and administrative decisions of the next century and a half that resulted in rapid industrial growth as well as profound environmental degradation, and highlights the partially successful restoration efforts undertaken from the 1970s to the present.

The Rhine is a classic example of a "multipurpose" river -- used simultaneously for transportation, for industry and agriculture, for urban drinking and sanitation needs, for hydroelectric production, and for recreation. It thus invites comparison with similarly over-burdened rivers such as the Mississippi, Hudson, Colorado, and Columbia. The Rhine's environmental problems are, however, even greater than those of other rivers because it is so densely populated (50 million people live along its borders), so highly industrialized (10% of global chemical production), and so short (775 miles in length).

Two centuries of nonstop hydraulic tinkering have resulted in a Rhine with a sleek and slender profile. In their quest for a perfect canal-like river, engineers have modified it more than any other large river in the world. As a consequence, between 1815 and 1975, the river lost most of its natural floodplain, riverside vegetation, migratory fish, and biodiversity. Recent efforts to restore that biodiversity, though heartening, can have only limited success because so many of the structural changes to the river are irreversible.

The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000 makes clear just how central the river has been to all aspects of European political, economic, and environmental life for the past two hundred years

The Secret Life of the Seine

By Mort Rosenblum

Mort Rosenblum, a celebrated foreign correspondent, invites us aboard his fifty-four-foot launch tied up in the center of Paris and introduces us to the characters who share his life along the river, ranging from eccentric movie stars and reclusive novelists to barge families just scraping by. He then hauls in the bow line for an unforgettable tour of the river itself from its source to its mouth. The Secret Life of the Seine is a love story between man and boat and the river that they live on, a discourse on the sensual beauty of France and the art of living well. In the tradition of A Year in Provence, Under the Tuscan Sun, and Paris to the Moon, here is what Garry Trudeau called "a moveable feast [with] a top speed of five knots—fast enough for fun, languid enough for dreaming. Take a trip you'll never take: This is what books are for." 

Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France

By Kermit Lynch

Kermit Lynch's recounting of his experiences on the wine route and in the wine cellars of France takes the reader through the Loire, Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Provence, Northern and Southern Rhone, and the Cote d'Or.

Baroque and Rococo (World of Art)

Baroque and Rococo art and architecture have become popular once more, after a century and a half of neglect, misunderstanding and scorn. This radical shift in taste has led to a rapid growth of detailed knowledge about the artists who created these exhilarating styles. The famous masters have been reassessed and whole areas of achievement--Italian Baroque painting, German Rococo architecture--have been brought to a new, enthusiastic public. Germain Bazin's engaging survey of this rich subject ranges over all Europe and traces the origins and effects of these two periods of art--from the Counter-Reformation to Neoclassicism, Exoticism and even Art Nouveau. 218 illus., 43 in color.

"He writes with a Gallic verve and grace which are very successfully conveyed through Mr. Jonathan Griffin's translation...His observations upon painters and painting are particularly acute." --The Connoisseu

French Wine: A History

By Roderick Phillips

For centuries, wine has been associated with France more than with any other country. France remains one of the world’s leading wine producers by volume and enjoys unrivaled cultural recognition for its wine. If any wine regions are global household names, they are French regions such as Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy. Within the wine world, products from French regions are still benchmarks for many wines.
 
French Wine is the first synthetic history of wine in France: from Etruscan, Greek, and Roman imports and the adoption of wine by beer-drinking Gauls to its present status within the global marketplace. Rod Phillips places the history of grape growing and winemaking in each of the country’s major regions within broad historical and cultural contexts.

Examining a range of influences on the wine industry, wine trade, and wine itself, the book explores religion, economics, politics, revolution, and war, as well as climate and vine diseases. French Wine is the essential reference on French wine for collectors, consumers, sommeliers, and industry professionals.

In a French Kitchen: Tales and Traditions of Everyday Home Cooking in France

By Susan Herrmann Loomis

A delightful celebration of French life and the cooks who turn even the simplest meals into a celebration.

One by one, readers are invited to meet the busy people of Louviers and surrounding villages and towns of Loomis's adopted home, from runway-chic Edith, who has zero passion for cooking - but a love of food that inspires her to whip up an array of mouthwatering dishes - to Nathalie, who becomes misty-eyed as she talks about her mother's Breton cooking, then goes on to reproduce it. Through friends and neighbours like these, Loomis learns that delicious, even decadent meals don't have to be complicated.

Are French cooks better organized when planning and shopping? Do they have a greater ability to improvise with whatever they have on hand when unexpected guests arrive? The answer to both is: Yes. But they also have an innate understanding of food and cooking, are instinctively knowledgeable about seasonal produce, and understand what combination of simple ingredients will bring out the best of their gardens or local markets.

Thankfully for everyone In a French Kitchen shares the everyday French tips, secrets and recipes that allow them to turn every meal into a sumptious occasion.

In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art

By Sue Roe

When the young Pablo Picasso first arrived in Paris in 1900, the most progressive young artists all lived and worked in the seedy hillside quarter of Montmartre, in the shade of the old windmills. Over the next decade, among the studios, salons, cafés, dance halls, and galleries of Montmartre, the young Spaniard joined the likes of Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Braque, Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brancusi, Gertrude Stein, and many more in revolutionizing artistic expression.
 
Blending exceptional scholarship with graceful prose, Sue Roe paints a remarkable group portrait of the men and women who profoundly changed the arts of painting, sculpture, dance, music, literature, and fashion. She describes the origins of such movements as Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism, and reconstructs the stories behind immortal paintings by Picasso and Matisse. She shows how daily life in Montmartre—which brought artists together with acrobats and dancers, prostitutes and clowns—provided an essential cauldron for artistic experimentation and for the colorful relationships, friendships, loyalties, and feuds that gave rise to some of the most pathbreaking and lasting works of the twentieth century.
 
In Montmartre is a thrilling account of an extraordinary group of artists on the cusp of fame and immortality that brings vividly to life one of the key moments in the history of modern art.

The Food of France

By Waverley Root

Embraces not only the marvels of French cooking but French history, language, landscape, and customs as well. Here is France for the traveler, the chef, and the connoisseur of fine prose. Maps and b & w line drawings throughout.

Hemingway's Paris: A Writer's City in Words and Images

By Robert Wheeler

For the first time in trade paperback, experience Hemingway’s Paris in all its beauty and grandeur. In gorgeous black-and-white images, Hemingway’s Paris depicts a story of remarkable passion—for a city, a woman, and a time. No other city in any of his travels was as significant, professionally or emotionally, as Paris. And it remains there, all of the complexity, beauty, and intrigue that Hemingway describes in the pages of so much of his work.

It is all still there for the reader and traveler to experience—the history, the streets, and the city. Restaurants, hotels, homes, sites, and favorite bars are all detailed here. The ninety-five black-and-white photographs in Hemingway’s Paris are of the highest caliber. The accompanying text reveals Wheeler’s deep understanding of Hemingway: his torment, his talent, the obstacles he faced, and the places of refuge needed to nurture one of the preeminent writers of the twentieth century.

Moved by the humanistic writing of Hemingway, Wheeler was inspired to travel throughout France, Italy, Spain, Africa, and Cuba, where he has sought to gain insight into the motivation behind Hemingway’s books and short stories. As a teacher, lecturer, and photojournalist, he set out to capture and interpret the Paris that Ernest Hemingway experienced in the first part of the twentieth century. Through his journal and photographs, Wheeler portrays the intimate connection Hemingway had with the woman he never stopped loving, Hadley, and with the city he loved most, Paris.

Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

With sound historical scholarship and penetrating insight, Roland
Bainton examines Luther's widespread influence. He re-creates the
spiritual setting of the sixteenth century, showing Luther's place
within it and influence upon it. Richly illustrated with more than
100 woodcuts and engravings from Luther's own time, Here I Stand
dramatically brings to life Martin Luther, the great Reformer.

A specialist in Reformation history, Roland H. Bainton was for
forty-two years Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at
Yale, and he continued his writing well into his twenty years of
retirement. Bainton wore his scholarship lightly and had a lively,
readable style. His most popular book was Here I Stand: A Life of
Martin Luther (1950), which sold more than a million copies.

Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World

On All Hallow’s Eve in 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther posted a document he hoped would spark an academic debate, but that instead ignited a conflagration that would forever destroy the world he knew. Five hundred years after Luther’s now famous Ninety-five Theses appeared, Eric Metaxas, acclaimed biographer of the bestselling Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, paints a startling portrait of the wild figure whose adamantine faith cracked the edifice of Western Christendom and dragged medieval Europe into the future. Written in riveting prose and impeccably researched, Martin Luther tells the searing tale of a humble man who, by bringing ugly truths to the highest seats of power, caused the explosion whose sound is still ringing in our ears. Luther’s monumental faith and courage gave birth to the ideals of liberty, equality, and individualism that today lie at the heart of all modern life.

My Life in France

By Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme

In her own words, here is the story of Julia Child's years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found her "true calling." Filled with the black-and-white photographs that her husband Paul loved to take when he was not battling bureaucrats, as well as family snapshots, this memoir is laced with stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia embraced so whole-heartedly. Above all, she reveals the kind of spirit and determination, the sheer love of cooking, and the drive to share that with her fellow Americans that made her the extraordinary success she became.

A Tale of Two Cities

By Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal

All Quiet on the Western Front

On the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I: a hardcover edition of the classic tale of a young German soldier's harrowing experiences in the trenches, widely acclaimed as the greatest war novel of all time.

When a twenty-year-old man named Paul and his classmates enlist in the German army during World War I, they are full of youthful enthusiam. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught to believe in shatters under the first brutal bombardment in the trenches. Through the ensuing years of horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another. Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel not only portrays in vivid detail the combatants' physical and mental trauma, but dramatizes as well the tragic detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home. Remarque's stated intention--to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war--remains as powerful and relevant as ever, a century after that conflict's end.

Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

A Major Literary Event: a brilliant new translation of Thomas Mann's first great novel, one of the two for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929.

Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1900, when Mann was only twenty-five, has become a classic of modem literature -- the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany. With consummate skill, Mann draws a rounded picture of middle-class life: births and christenings; marriages, divorces, and deaths; successes and failures. These commonplace occurrences, intrinsically the same, vary slightly as they recur in each succeeding generation. Yet as the Buddenbrooks family eventually succumbs to the seductions of modernity -- seductions that are at variance with its own traditions -- its downfall becomes certain.

In immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modem family chronicles; it has, indeed, proved a model for most of them. Judged as the greatest of Mann's novels by some critics, it is ranked as among the greatest by all. Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.

Les Misérables

By Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Inspector Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.

Madame Bovary

By Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary is the debut novel of French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. When the novel was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, public prosecutors attacked the novel for obscenity. The resulting trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published in two volumes. A seminal work of literary realism, the novel is now considered Flaubert's masterpiece, and one of the most influential literary works in history.

The Count of Monte Cristo

By Alexandre Dumas

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas’ epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.

The Glass-Blowers

By Daphne du Maurier

The world of the glass-blowers has its own traditions, it's own language - and its own rules. 'If you marry into glass' Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say goodbye to everything familiar, and enter a closed world'. But crashing into this world comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution, against which the family struggles to survive.

Years later, Sophie Duval reveals to her long-lost nephew the tragic story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. Drawing on her own family's tale of tradition and sorrow, Daphne du Maurier weaves an unforgettable saga of beauty, war, and family.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

By Emmuska Orczy

Armed with only his wits and his cunning, one man recklessly defies the French revolutionaries and rescues scores of innocent men, women, and children from the deadly guillotine. His friends and foes know him only as the Scarlet Pimpernel. But the ruthless French agent Chauvelin is sworn to discover his identity and to hunt him down.

The Three Musketeers

By Alexandre Dumas

Young D’Artagnan arrives in Paris to join the king’s elite guards, but almost immediately finds he is duelling with some of the very men he has come to swear allegiance to – Porthos, Athos and Aramis, inseparable friends - the Three Musketeers. But D'Artagnan's loyalty to his new allies puts him in the path of Cardinal Richelieu's deadly machinations, and when the young hero falls in love with the beautiful but inaccessible Constance, he finds himself in a world of murder, conspiracy and lies with only the Musketeers to depend on. A stirring tale of friendship and adventure, The Three Musketeers continues to be one of the most influential and popular pieces of French literature.

In this acclaimed new translation, Richard Pevear’s introduction investigates the controversy of Dumas’ literary collaborators, and how important serialisation was to the book’s success. This edition also includes notes on the text.

The Trial

Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka's death, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.

In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel as full of energy and power as when it was first written.

Anastasia

Anatole Litvak

Russian exiles in Paris groom a down-and-out girl to pose as the heir to the Russian throne in order to collect ten million pounds from the Bank of England. In 1957, Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance as Anastasia. Filmed in Denmark, England and France.

All the Mornings of the World

Alain Corneau

When Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe finds out that his wife died while he was away, he builds a small house in his garden and dedicates his life to music and his two young daughters. Originally titled Tous les matins du monde. Filmed in France.

A Very Long Engagement

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

A young woman searches for her fiancé, who has disappeared at the Battle of the Somme. Jeunet features dreamlike sequences and flashbacks while portraying the horrors of war. Originally titled Un long dimanche de fiançailles. Filmed in various locations throughout France.

Amadeus

Milos Forman

This is the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, told by his rival Antonio Salieri. Salieri, a devout man who believes his success and talent as a composer are God’s rewards for his piety, wishes he were as good a musician as Mozart and is perplexed as to why God favors him. Filmed in multiple locations including Prague.

Das Verlegenheitskind

Peter Paul Brauer

A rollicking German comedy starring Ida Wust and Paul Klinger. Filmed in and around Cochem, Germany.

Duel in the Forest

Helmut Kautner

The romanticized story of Johannes Buckler, known as Schinderhannes, who led a band of rebels during the Napoleonic Wars. Originally titled Der Shinderhannes. Filmed in and around Cochem, Germany.

Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan

Alternating among three different time periods, this film is about Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire and France who are stranded on Dunkirk during World War II and waiting for rescue while being surrounded by the German Army. This multi-award-winning film won three Oscars in 2018. Filmed in multiple locations including France, The Netherlands and the UK.

By the Sea

Angelina Jolie

Vanessa and her husband, Roland, seem to be growing apart despite traveling together in France. But when they discover a quiet seaside town, they develop a mutual interest in the colorful inhabitants, bringing the two of them closer together. Filmed in various locations throughout Malta.

Children of Paradise

Marcel Carne

One of the most famous French art films, Children of Paradise resembles a Manet painting with its dazzling depiction of 19th-century Paris streets, theaters and cafés. Originally titled Les enfants du paradis. Filmed in France.

Charade

Stanley Donen

Regina, a Paris-based American, realizes that she does not really know or love her Swiss husband, Charles. But before she can request a divorce, Charles is found dead and Regina is pursued by men who want the fortune her late husband had stolen. Filmed in various locations throughout Paris.

Nuremberg

Stuart Schulberg

This documentary examines the war crime trials at Nuremberg through photographs, recorded audio and interviews. Filmed in Nuremberg, Germany.

The Longest Day

Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton and Gerd Oswald

This Academy Award–winning drama recounts the events of D-Day, as told from both the Allied and German perspectives. Filmed in Normandy, France.

La Vie en Rose

Olivier Dahan

The back-and-forth nature of the narrative in this nonchronological look at the tragic and famous life of the “Little Sparrow,” Édith Piaf, suggests the patterns of memory and association. Filmed in Paris, France and Prague, Czech Republic.

Manon of the Spring

Claude Berri

In this sequel to Jean de Florette, featuring Yves Montand, a beautiful shepherdess plots vengeance on the men whose greedy conspiracy to acquire her father’s land caused his death years earlier. Originally titled Manon des sources. Filmed in various locations throughout France.

The Return of the Pink Panther

Blake Edwards

When the Pink Panther diamond is stolen, with the only clue being the Phantom’s trademark glove, Inspector Clouseau is put on the case. Filmed in France, Morocco and Switzerland.

Ratatouille

Brad Bird

In this delightful animated film from Pixar Animation Studios, Remy the rat will stop at nothing to become one of Paris’s top chefs, befriending a restaurant’s garbage boy to commandeer a kitchen. The movie won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film.

Yentl

Barbra Streisand

Yentl Mendel is the boyishly klutzy daughter and only child of long-widowed Rebbe Mendel. Rebbe teaches the Talmud to local boys and to Yentl, but secretly because girls are not allowed to learn the law. When her father dies, Yentl disguises herself as a boy in order to get admitted to a yeshiva, to study the texts, traditions, Talmud and more. Filmed in multiple locations including Prague.

Victor/Victoria

Blake Edwards

This gender-bending comedy starring Julie Andrews and James Garner tells the story of a struggling 1934 Paris lounge singer who concocts a scheme with her agent to perform as a man who is impersonating a woman. Difficulties ensue when she falls in love with a man. This movie won an Oscar for Best Adaptation Score.

How to Steal a Million

William Wyler

When Nicole’s father, a legendary art collector and forger, lends a fake statue to a prominent Paris museum, Nicole hires a burglar to steal the statue before the forgery is discovered. Filmed in Paris.

Heidelberger Romanze

Paul Verhoeven

While on a trip to Heidelberg with his daughter, a wealthy American businessman recounts a romance he had with a local girl 40 years earlier. Filmed in Heidelberg.

In the City of Sylvia

José Luis Guerín

This film follows a young man, Él, when he returns to Strasbourg in search of Sylvia, a woman whom he asked for directions in a bar six years earlier. Filmed in France.

Immortal Beloved

Bernard Rose

This film looks at the life and death of Ludwig van Beethoven, including a famous love letter Beethoven wrote to a nameless beloved. Ludwig van Beethoven dies and his assistant/friend Schindler proceeds to deal with his last will and testament. Filmed in multiple locations including Prague

The Illusionist

Neil Burger

In late 19th-century Vienna, Duchess Sophie von Teschen is reunited with renowned illusionist Eisenheim after 15 years. The duchess and Eisenheim realize that they still love each other, but she is soon to be wed to the Crown Prince Leopold in what for him would be a marriage solely in pursuit of power. Filmed in multiple locations including Prague.

Jean de Florette

Claude Berri

Based on the two-volume novel by Marcel Pagnol, a greedy landowner and his backward nephew conspire to block the only water source for an adjoining property in order to bankrupt the owner and force him to sell. The film garnered a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Filmed in various locations throughout France.

Judgement at Nuremberg

Stanley Kramer

A moving re-enactment of the Nazi war crime trials at Nuremberg, starring Oscar winner for Best Actor Maximilian Schell and featuring Judy Garland and Spencer Tracy. Filmed in Nuremberg and Berlin, Germany.

Saving Private Ryan

Steven Spielberg

Winner of five Oscars and boasting an all-star cast, Saving Private Ryan is the gripping story of a mission to rescue a paratrooper behind enemy lines after the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Filmed in Normandy, France.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

Philip Kaufman

Just as three intimately close friends are becoming deeply involved with the events of the Prague Spring of 1968, Soviet tanks crush the nonviolent rebels and their lives are changed forever. Filmed in multiple locations including Prague.

Forgiveness

Mariusz Kotowski

Also screened under the title Esther’s Diary, this dramatic Holocaust film follows the adult daughters of two women who were best friends in 1940s Poland, but were later separated by Nazi horrors. One daughter learns of the past from her mother’s diary. Filmed in Austin, Texas.

Amélie

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

This romantic comedy traces the life of a timid waitress in Paris’s atmospheric and beautifully captured Montmartre neighborhood as she makes it her mission to help improve the lives of those around her while neglecting her isolated existence. Nominated for five Academy Awards. Originally titled Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain. Filmed in Paris.

Julie & Julia

Nora Ephron

With scenes of Paris and mouthwatering French food, the story of Julia Child’s start in the cooking profession is intertwined with blogger Julie Powell’s challenge to cook all the recipes in Child’s first book; stars Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Streep won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress. Filmed in New York City, New York and Paris, France.

A Good Year

Ridley Scott

Based on Peter Mayle’s book A Year in Provence, a workaholic trades his life selling bonds in London to cash in on a winery that was left to him by his dead uncle. With every day of his new life, Max grows out of his obsessive behavior and into a life he comes to embrace. Filmed in London, England and France.

Paris, Je T’aime

Olivier Assayas

Twenty great filmmakers were given a simple challenge: create a short film (under five minutes) in Paris, about love. Whimsically beautiful, this film reveals Paris’s neighborhoods and the very human stories that they hold close. Filmed in Paris.

Moulin Rouge!

Baz Luhrmann

Referred to by some critics as a “pastiche-jukebox musical,” this lush film follows a young English poet in Belle Époque Paris as he falls in love with a terminally ill courtesan and cabaret performer in the Montmartre district. The movie stars Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor and won two Academy Awards.

Sarah’s Key

Gilles Paquet-Brenner

This moving and enlightening film traces a modern-day journalist (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) who becomes entangled in the World War II plight of a young girl separated from her family by the Nazi Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of 1942. Filmed in multiple locations including Paris.

Les Misérables

Tom Hooper

Set in revolutionary Paris, this epic musical retells Victor Hugo’s timeless tale of Jean Valjean, who vows to turn his life of crime around despite being doggedly chased by Inspector Javert. The story culminates as turmoil engulfs Paris, leading to the Paris Uprising of 1832. Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway star; Hathaway won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Filmed in multiple locations including Greenwich, London; Portsmouth, Hampshire; and France.

The Queen

Stephen Frears

Dame Helen Mirren turns in an Oscar-winning performance as Queen Elizabeth in this film that profiles the Queen’s attempts to treat Princess Diana’s death as a private family matter. Filmed in multiple locations including London, Paris and Scotland.

Two for the Road

Stanley Donen

In this romantic comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, a married couple takes a road trip to St. Tropez, and as they drive through France, the audience is treated to flashbacks of previous trips that have influenced their relationship. Nominated for one Academy Award and two Golden Globes. Filmed in various locations throughout France.

The Three Musketeers

Paul W. S. Anderson

The young and impulsive D’Artagnan enlists three unemployed Musketeers to save the French throne from a treasonous plot. Starring Jupiter Award nominees Mila Jovovich and Orlando Bloom. Filmed in Bamberg, Burghausen and Munich, Germany.

Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen

Part romantic comedy, part fantasy, this film follows a screenwriter visiting Paris with his fiancée and her parents. Each night, he finds himself in 1920s Paris salons, meeting the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds, causing him to reconsider marriage. Allen won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay; the film was also nominated for Best Picture. Filmed in Paris.

The Zookeeper’s Wife

Niki Caro

When Germany invades Poland, Jan and Antonina Zabinski, owners and keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, hide 300 persecuted Polish Jews in plain sight from the Germans. Winner of Political Film Society, USA and Seattle Jewish Film Festival awards. Filmed in Prague, Czech Republic.

Flame & Citron

Ole Christian Madsen

In this action-drama, we follow two Danish resistance fighters, Flame and Citron, who kill Danish Nazis and collaborators without hesitation until they are no longer certain whom their targets represent. Filmed in multiple locations including Copenhagen, Denmark; Berlin, Germany; and Prague, Czech Republic.