Best Times (2004)

Sophie Deraspe’s adaptation of the classic Greek tragedy of the same name reimagines the story of a woman’s quest for justice as a commentary on the immigrant experience in contemporary Montreal.

A prosperous young Indian man falls in love with his servant, a widow with the dream of becoming a fashion designer.

Alma’s family has been producing quality olive oil in the Baix Maestrat area of Spain’s Castellón for generations. Yet changing pressures in the industry have made their traditional practices economically untenable, and the family is now in the mass-production poultry business. Alma’s grandfather has not spoken in years. Sadness envelopes him, and he no longer wants to eat. His sons—Alma’s father and uncle—are impatient with him, but Alma understands her grandfather. She realizes he has been grieving for a thousand-year-old olive tree that the family has uprooted and sold to pay some debts. (A sadly common reality in Castellón at present.) Unable to bear the idea that her grandfather could die without seeing this terrible wrong corrected, Alma undertakes a quixotic mission to locate the tree and return it to the family orchard, so that her grandfather may have peace in his final days.

A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.

When Tsanko Petrov, a railroad worker, finds millions of lev on the train tracks, he decides to turn the entire amount over to the police. Grateful, the state rewards him with a new wristwatch… which soon stops working. Meanwhile, Julia Staikova, the head of PR for the Ministry of Transport, loses his old watch. Here starts Petrov’s desperate struggle to get back not only his old watch, but his dignity.

Mélanie, 16 years old, lives with her mother. She likes going to school, her friends, playing the cello, and she wants to change the world. But when she meets a boy on the Internet and falls in love with him, her world changes as she is gradually recruited by Daesh. Sonia is 17 years old, and she almost did something irrevocable to “guarantee” her family a place in paradise. These teenage girls might be called Anaïs, Manon or Leila, and one day they all might go some way down the recruitment process. But can they ever come back from it?

At Léon Blum High School in Créteil, France, a history teacher decides to have her weakest 10th grade class participate in a national history competition.

Tony is admitted to a rehabilitation center after a serious ski accident. Dependent on the medical staff and pain relievers, she takes time to look back on a turbulent relationship that she experienced with Georgio.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.