French Dramas on Netflix
Last updated March 29, 2023
A Bottle in the Gaza Sea
2011 | NR | 3.7 out of 5 StarsA random connection blossoms into love in this drama about Tal, a recent arrival to Israel, who witnesses a cafe bombing that traumatizes her. In response, Tal writes a heartfelt letter that follows an unlikely path to Naim, a young Palestinian.
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Lumumba
2000 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsIn 1960, when the Congo achieved independence after years of Belgian occupation, young nationalist Patrice Lumumba became the first elected prime minister of the new state -- lasting only two months in office before being brutally assassinated.
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A Happy Event
2011 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsWhen a vivacious French grad student unexpectedly gets pregnant, she and her boyfriend scramble to make sense of the new path their lives have taken, including the trepidation, joy and other wildly conflicting emotions that come with having a baby.
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I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single
2006 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsSuccessful perfume executive Luis (Alain Chabat) is happily single, but his mother and sisters want him to settle down. After they arrange a string of disastrous blind dates, Luis concocts a crazy scheme that will make his family happy without his getting married. All he needs to do is hire a girl to act as his fiancée and then dump him at the altar. But when Luis meets Emmanuelle, the plan takes a turn he never anticipated in this French comedy.
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Blame It on Fidel
2006 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsNina Kervel-Bey stars as 9-year-old Anna, a privileged young Parisian girl whose orderly, structured life is thrown into turmoil when her parents are drawn into Paris's turbulent and radical 1970s political scene. Julie Gavras (daughter of famed French filmmaker Costa-Gavras) directs this 2007 Sundance Film Festival competition entry.
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A Woman Is a Woman
1961 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsStriptease artist Angela (Anna Karina) is desperate to have a child, but her boyfriend, Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy), isn't as anxious. Although he cares for Angela and wants to keep their relationship going, he's not ready for that kind of responsibility. Instead, he suggests that she get together with his buddy Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo) -- a proposal Angela ultimately accepts, to Emile's shock and dismay. Frenchman Jean-Luc Godard directs.
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Intimate Enemies
2007 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsIn the mountains of Algeria, a French army lieutenant takes command of a platoon and is soon leading the men into a dangerous place called the Forbidden Zone, where his will -- and his morality -- are tested by the atrocities of war.
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Under the Bombs
2007 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsWhen divorced Shiite mother Zeina (Nada Abou Farhat) takes a risky journey to war-torn Lebanon to find her missing 6-year-old son, her only help comes in the form of Tony (Georges Khabbaz), a Christian cabbie who agrees to escort her on the dangerous trip. The harrowing expedition slowly brings the odd couple together in this romantic drama, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and Venice Film Festival.
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War of the Buttons
2011 | NR | 3.6 out of 5 StarsThe ongoing "war" between two rival groups of kids in neighboring French villages during the Nazi occupation mirrors the larger events of World War II in this drama adapted from the classic novel.
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Army of Crime
2009 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsThis gripping historical drama recounts the story of Armenian-born Missak Manouchian, a woodworker and political activist who led an immigrant laborer division of the Parisian Resistance on dozens of operations against the Nazis in 1943.
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Leaving Las Vegas
1995 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsAn alcoholic moves to Las Vegas to drink himself to death and meets a prostitute who comes to love him, without trying to upset his nihilistic agenda. The marginalized couple cling to each other despite the direness of their individual circumstances.
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Free Men
2011 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsGetting by selling black market goods in Nazi-occupied Paris, a young Algerian immigrant is arrested and made to become a police spy. But when his activities expose him to a beautiful Arab Jewish singer, his loyalties soon change.
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Mozart's Sister
2011 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsThis film dramatizes the frustrating early life of Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart, a gifted musician in her own right who finds her musical career cut short by her father's conventional view of gender roles and her younger brother Wolfgang's talent.
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Inch' Allah Dimanche
2001 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsAn Algerian woman leaves her homeland to join her husband in France. In a land and culture foreign to her, she struggles against her mother-in-law's tyranny and her husband's distrustful bitterness as she adjusts to her life in exile.
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A Secret
2007 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsClaude Miller directs this engrossing drama about a Jewish boy in post-World War II Paris who stumbles upon a mysterious toy in the attic, exposing his family's secret dark past and how it survived Nazi atrocities. Can the child grasp the devastating truth, or will it drive him deeper into his personal fantasy world? Cécile De France, Julie Depardieu, Ludivine Sagnier, Patrick Bruel and Mathieu Amalric star.
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The Grocer's Son
2007 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsWhen his father suffers a stroke, Antoine (Nicolas Cazale) reluctantly returns home from the big city to his small mountain village to help out with the family business, a grocery that makes daily rounds to the town's elderly inhabitants. But when Antoine's poor manners rub the villagers the wrong way, can the lovely young Claire (Clotilde Hesme) help smooth things over? French director Eric Guirado helms this charmingly low-key film.
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Enter the Void
2009 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsWhen a foreign drug dealer living in Tokyo is fatally shot in a police raid, his spirit leaves his body in a hallucinatory odyssey that chaotically merges his past, present and future in this drama from provocative French auteur Gaspar Noé.
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Little White Lies
2010 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsWhen Max and Vero's friend is seriously injured in an accident, they choose to go ahead with a planned birthday celebration at their beach house -- an event that usually draws a convivial and happy crowd of friends.
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Ridicule
1996 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsCharles Berling stars as a cash-poor nobleman during the reign of Louis XVI. When his village is invaded by mosquitoes, he travels to Versailles to beg for the king's help. But his plans are soon diverted when he's swept into a love triangle. To survive Versailles and solve his problem, he must rely on his wit and smarts. Nominated for a 1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, Ridicule co-stars Fanny Ardant and Judith Godreche.
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Holy Motors
2012 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsThis surreal drama from France follows DL, who becomes many different individuals living very different lives over a 24-hour period -- switching effortlessly from man to woman, impoverished to affluent, young to old, and even assassin to family man.
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The Widow of St. Pierre
2001 | NR | 3.5 out of 5 StarsIn 1849 on the French fishing island of Saint Pierre, Ariel Neel Auguste awaits execution for murder under the watchful eye of the captain of the island guard, who is waiting for a guillotine to arrive from the mainland.
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I Killed My Mother
2009 | NR | 3.4 out of 5 StarsThis semiautobiographical drama chronicles the caustic relationship between gay teenager Hubert and his overburdened mother Chantale, who grapple with the notion that although they can't seem to live together, they're not sure they can live apart.
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Polisse
2011 | NR | 3.4 out of 5 StarsThis French drama presents a fictionalized but well-researched portrait of the juvenile protection division of the Paris court system, following a documentarian as she films the employees in the department and the children under its authority.
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Outside the Law
2010 | NR | 3.4 out of 5 StarsLeft without a home in their native land, three Algerian brothers (Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila) split from their mother and seek out strikingly dissimilar lives. But fate won't keep the siblings apart, eventually summoning them all to Paris for a reunion. Director Rachid Bouchareb's momentous drama -- set amid Algeria's post-World War II fight for independence from France -- earned an Oscar nod for Best Foreign Language Film.
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Tales of the Night
2011 | NR | 3.4 out of 5 StarsIn this elaborately animated collection of six exotic tales, three friends meet nightly in a dilapidated cinema, where magic brings to life the adventures of lovely princesses, fierce werewolves, courageous peasant lads and lively dragons.
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