Litoral

The New City

Short documentary film on the construction of the new town, Marne-la-Vallée.

The One-Eyed Man

With his body now devoid of substance and able to fly, N. wanders looking for a way to return to life and reintegrate into the world.

La Femme au foyer

The life of a right-wing housewife in Chile during the prior days to Salvador Allende's military overthrow.

Of Great Events and Ordinary People

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ‘60s. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.

Manuel on the Island of Wonders

This three part French TV serial for children (alternate versions exist as a feature, Manoel’s Destinies, and a 4 part Portuguese TV serial, Adventure in Madeira) is the favourite of many devotees of Raúl Ruiz. This is because it ties the enchantment and mystery of Lewis Carroll, Carlo Collodi and the Brothers Grimm to the filmmaker’s experiments with narrative strategies and what he calls the pentaludic model of storytelling (where characters are thrown dice-like into combinations and situations governed by the play of Chance and Destiny).

Palombella rossa

Michele is an MP for the Italian Communist Party who loses his memory in a car crash, though hardly anyone around him seems to notice. During a crucial water polo match on the eve of election day, he gradually begins to remember his past life, revealing a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors that of Italian communism itself.

Richard III

Richard of Gloucester uses murder and manipulation to claim England's throne.

Médée: Chronique d’une mise en scène

A chronicle of Raúl Ruiz’s production of Michèle Reverdy’s opera “Médée”.

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.

The Divisions of Nature

Ruiz on the film: "Les Divisions is a documentary about the Château de Chambord and the title comes from the Divisione of Johannes Scotus (Erigena), the ninth century Irish philosopher (who was a 'realist', although the film is more 'nominalist' in characterization of the castle which presents itself as a representation). I say that it is a representation, since it is neither practical for military purposes (too many doors), nor to live in (too many draughts), but only as pure representation. So for the commentary, I tried to imagine how a Renaissance philosopher would view it in a pastiche of a scholastic or gothic text, then a pastiche of Fichte's Vocation of Man and finally a pastiche of Baudrillard."

The Lost Domain

Set in 1973 during the coup d'etat in Chile, Max recalls his encounters in London during World War II with French aviator Antoine, a childhood hero he first met in his native country one morning in 1932 and who initiated him to the wonders of aviation.

Brise-glace

Collaborative experimental project on which three director made different films about the Swedish icebreaker "Frej".

The Suspended Vocation

The film centers on a Dominican monk named Jérôme (played by one actor in colour and another actor in black-and-white) and his interactions with various higher-ups within the French Catholic Church. Ruiz's intention was to reflect the ideological arguments that plagued Latin American left-wing political parties.

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.

Mysteries of Lisbon

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure and misfortune in the convulsed Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. (A longer television version of the film of the same name, released in 2010.)

Nucingen House

Surreal gothic comedy about a gambler who wins a strange Chilean mansion and takes his frail wife there.

Robin Hood

A modern reimagining of the classic tale. After the Norman invasion of England, Rob, a Saxon forester’s son, and Marian, a Norman lord’s daughter, fall in love and unite to fight for justice, challenge corruption, and restore peace to the land.

The Adventures of Sinbad

The Adventures of Sinbad is a Canadian television series which aired from 1996 to 1998. It follows on the story from the pilot of the same name, and revolves around the series' protagonist, Sinbad. The series is a re-telling of the adventures of Sinbad from The Arabian Nights.

The Legend of the Blue Sea

A mermaid from the Joseon period ends up in present-day Seoul, where she crosses paths with a swindler who may have ties to someone from her past.

Merlin

The unlikely friendship between Merlin, a young man gifted with extraordinary magical powers, and Prince Arthur, heir to the crown of Camelot.

KAOS

As discord reigns on Mount Olympus and almighty Zeus spirals into paranoia, three mortals are destined to reshape the future of humankind.

Kaamelott

Kaamelott is a French comedy medieval fantasy television series created, directed, written, scored, and edited by Alexandre Astier, who also starred as the main character. The series, which originally ran for six seasons (referred to as 'books'), ran from January 3, 2005, to October 31, 2009, on M6. In this offbeat account of King Arthur's quest for the Grail, virtually every journey, battle or adventure is stopped dead in its tracks by the knights of the round table's most worldly traits: cowardice, greed, idiocy or misplaced chivalry. As a consequence, instead of epic adventures we are treated with the characters' pragmatic and anachronistic take on each and every event in the Grail legend, true to the purest sitcom tradition.