Jacques Chirac

Beautiful Europeans Meet the Ugly American -- Thomas Schuesler is pretty much your average American guy. He loves his family and runs a small business in a Southern California surf town. Schuesler never held any hard and fast political opinions, although he d traveled enough to know many people he met throughout the world felt differently about the U.S. than he did which was fine by him. But one day his world perspective dramatically changed. While in Europe in the summer of 2004, Schuesler was shocked to read a newspaper article claiming anti-American sentiment as the cause of the break between America and its French and German allies prior to the 2003 Iraq war. Fifty years of solidarity were gone, the article went on, not because France and Germany loved peace but because they resented the U.S. Remarks Schuesler, To read that Europeans are racist anti-Americans involved in double dealing, with dirty motives for not supporting the U.S., made me very angry. I knew I had to do something. Schuesler then began a seven-year journey to find the truth about the duplicitous European-American dynamic that led to the Allied break before the Iraq war. What he reveals in his new indie film, BEAUTIFUL EUROPEANS MEET THE LONE AMERICAN, is a betrayal leading to countless avoidable deaths in Iraq. Former French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder were secretly at war with the U.S., with Saddam Hussein as their silent partner. Score of interviews, nearly a thousand pages of transcripts, and tens of thousands of pages of research materials complete Schuesler s story of the Iraq war. Using statements from in-the-know government officials, academics and journalists, BEAUTIFUL EUROPEANS connects the dots leading to France and Germany s double dealings, the ideology that today still manipulates many Europeans who distrust the U.S. because of the war in Iraq, and the motivation behind the election of Barack Obama. Visit www.beautifuleuropeans.com for more i

The infamous Vel' d'Hiv Roundup is the focus of this gripping French drama starring Melanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds, Beginners) and Jean Reno (The Da Vinci Code, The Professional). Two days after Bastille Day in 1942, French police carried out an extensive raid of Jews in Greater Paris. More than 13,000 people were arrested, among them 4,000 children, consigned to several miserable days in Paris's Velodrome d'Hiver stadium before being shipped to internment camps within France, and finally to Auschwitz. Long a taboo subject in France--Jacques Chirac issued a public apology only in 1995--the raid and its political backdrop are brought to stirring life in writer-director Rose Bosch's detailed scenario. With a meticulously constructed script based on extensive research and first-hand accounts, La Rafle (The Roundup) became a big box-office hit in France, and its audiences included thousands of young people who came to learn about a dark chapter in their country's history.