Familiar Faces in a New Moral Knot: Robert Guédiguian’s The Thieving Magpie

In The Thieving Magpie, Robert Guédiguian returns to his Marseille family—Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, the working-class apartments and port-side streets—but knots them into one of his sharpest moral dilemmas. Maria, an overworked home-care aide with a good heart and an empty wallet, quietly steals small sums from the elderly people she tends in order to support her grandson, just as her daughter falls in love with the son of one of her clients.

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Costa-Gavras’ The Last Breath: Humanizing Medicine and the Politics of Care

Costa-Gavras’ The Last Breath is a sober, talk-driven drama that turns away from medical heroics to ask what happens when curing is no longer possible and only caring remains. Through the encounters between a renowned philosopher (Denis Podalydès) and a palliative-care doctor (Kad Merad), the film probes how to tell the truth, when to stop treatment, and how to accompany patients who know they are nearing the end.

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Niels Tavernier’s The Future Awaits: Repetition Without Depth

The Future Awaits (La vie devant moi) focuses on one Jewish family hidden in a Paris chambre de bonne after the Vél d’Hiv roundup, guided by the real testimony of Tauba Birenbaum. Niels Tavernier’s film is strongest when it sticks to that narrow premise: the claustrophobia of silence, the grinding fear of being discovered, the moral courage of Rose and Désiré, the ordinary couple who choose to hide them.

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