Josiane Balasko
The story revolves around 22-year-old Laure, who is trying to find her feet. After performing brilliantly in her literature studies, she enrols as a communications officer in the Naval Fusiliers. She will quickly have to adapt to and assimilate the rules that apply within the institution. But Laure is a determined woman, and she has a thirst for knowledge – still. A thirst to learn to get to know and be comfortable with herself, and to find her place.
February 1976. Somalian rebels hijack a school bus carrying 21 French children and their teacher in Djibouti City. When the terrorists drive it to a no-man’s-land on the border between Somalia and French territory, the French Government sends out a newly formed elite squad to rescue the hostages. Within a few hours, the highly trained team arrives to the crisis area, where the Somalian National Army has taken position behind the barbed wire on the border. The French unit is left with very few options to rescue the hostages. As the volatile situation unravels, the French men quickly come up with a daring plan: carry out a simultaneous 5 men sniper attack to get the children and the teacher out safely. A true story.
She drove me into a corner, then forced me to go beyond my limits. She made me confront the absolute: love, sacrifice, tenderness, abandonment. She dislocated me, transformed me. Why didn’t anyone warn me? Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about this?” Un heureux événement, or an intimate view of motherhood, sincere and with no taboos.
Paloma is a serious and highly articulate but deeply bored 11-year-old who has decided to kill herself on her 12th birthday. Fascinated by art and philosophy, she questions and documents her life and immediate circle, drawing trenchant and often hilarious observations on the world around her. But as her appointment with death approaches, Paloma finally meets some kindred spirits in her building’s grumpy janitor and an enigmatic, elegant neighbor, both of whom inspire Paloma to question her rather pessimistic outlook on life.
