Jean-Jacques Annaud

Notre: Dame On Fire offers a blow-by-blow recreation of the gripping events that took place on April 15, 2019, when the cathedral suffered the biggest blaze in its history. The film retraces how heroic men and women put their lives on the line to accomplish an awe-inspiring rescue.

On April 15 2019, Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral catches fire, suffering the most significant disaster in its history. People put their lives on the line to save the renowned landmark.

Set in 1920s French Indochina, two tigers are separated as cubs after the ancient temple where they live is disturbed by Aidan McRory (Guy Pearce) who intends to steal and sell the ancient statues. Two tiger cubs are playing when one (later named Sangha) comes upon a young civet. Sangha chases the civet into its burrow and the mother civet appears and chases Sangha up a tree. The other tiger cub (later named Kumal) appears and chases the mother civet away. Gunshots are heard, and the tigress arrives to protect the cubs. She picks Sangha up and runs for safety. Kumal follows, but can't keep up and falls behind. The cubs' father appears, but the men have caught up with them and he is shot dead by McRory. McRory is an unscrupulous explorer, big-game hunter and temple looter. He discovers Kumal and befriends him, but McRory is arrested for stealing from the ancient temple and Kumal is kept by the chief in the Cambodian village where McRory had been staying. The chief then sells Kumal to a circus where he is to be the star attraction. Sangha remains in the jungle with his mother, but both are soon trapped by McRory as game for a vain Khmer prince to hunt. The mother is shot in the ear and thought to be dead before she jumps up and runs off with a hole in her ear. Sangha is discovered by young Raoul, son of the French administrator, Normandin, and becomes the child's pet. However, Raoul's mother's dog, Bittsi, a schipperke, is a constant antagonist to the young tiger. Kumal is trained by cruel circus ringmaster Zerbino to do tricks, such as jumping through a flaming hoop. Sangha meanwhile dwells peacefully with Raoul until he is at last cornered by Bittsi following a prolonged chase. In self-defence, Sangha attacks Bittsi, badly wounding although not killing him. This provokes a hysterical reaction from the household, particularly Raoul's mother, who insists that Sangha has "got the taste of blood now" and gets rid of him. As a result, he is made a part of the prince's palace menagerie, where he quickly gains a reputation as a ferocious beast. Sangha and Kumal are now very close to each other. The prince then decides to hold a festival in which a battle between two great beasts - the brother tigers - will be the centerpiece. When placed in the cage before the audience during the festival, the two brothers do not immediately recognize each other, and Kumal is afraid to fight. However, when the brothers finally recognize each other they begin to play together instead of fighting, and the audience likes this but the trainers don't. The trainer attempts to antagonize the tigers into fighting, but as he opens the cage to shoot one, the tigers escape, managing to frighten the trainers and the audience into the cage themselves. The two tigers escape, and McRory is determined to hunt them down. After Kumal showing Sangha how to jump through fire to escape, McRory and Raoul find them. However, as McRory takes aim at Sangha, Kumal appears, and demonstrates that he remembers the sweets McRory used to give him. McRory puts down his gun and vows never to hunt again. The two brothers make their way back to their temple home in the jungle where they meet up with their mother (who can be identified by the hole in her ear). Just before the credits, some comments to save the tigers (as a species) are shown.

In September 1942, Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law), a shepherd from the Ural Mountains who is now a soldier in the Red Army, finds himself on the front lines of the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalingrad is the last major city standing between the rampaging German forces and Moscow. Khrushchev orders the city to be held at all costs. Stalingrad as a city stands in ruins as neither army is willing to retreat. If Germany wins Stalingrad, they will control the rich oil fields of Central Asia. Troops are brought to the other side of the Volga River in freight trains and are then crammed into flimsy boats and are made to cross the Volga River without any fire cover. The Volga River is heavily bombarded by German artillery fire and fighter planes. Several boats perish in the attempt. Any soldiers who attempt to jump into the water are shot down by the propaganda officers who are on each boat. The docks of Stalingrad are littered with bodies of soldiers crippled in the war. Soldiers are forced into a suicidal charge without a rifle but with ammunition (half the soldiers were given a rifle, and the other half were given one pallet of ammunition (with 5 bullets) and were instructed to scrounge for supplies from other dead soldiers), the charge comes under heavy German fire from machine guns & tanks around the city. If the Soviet soldiers try to retreat, they are shot down by their own seniors who do not allow them to return to Soviet lines. The German loudspeakers ask Soviet soldiers to surrender as the Germans would treat them better than their own officers. Vassili hides among a pile of corpses, while a tank shell incapacitates a car. The occupant, Commissar Danilov, takes cover in the same heap of corpses and finds a rifle. Vassili reveals himself, advising the commissar not to fire until an explosion covers the noise. Danilov gives the rifle to Vassili, who, to the former's astonishment, is able to kill five German soldiers in less than a minute. Vassili uses impressive marksmanship skills taught to him by his grandfather from a young age to save himself and commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes). Together, Vassili and Danilov return to the Soviet base outside Stalingrad. Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins) arrives in Stalingrad to coordinate the city's defenses and demands ideas to improve morale. While the other commissars suggest more severe discipline and terror, Danilov, now a Senior Lieutenant, suggests that the people need figures to idolize, and publishes tales of Vassili's exploits in the army's newspaper that paint him as a national hero and propaganda icon. Vassili is transferred to the sniper division, and he and Danilov become friends. They also both become romantically interested in Tania (Rachel Weisz), a citizen of Stalingrad who has become a Private in the local militia. Danilov has her transferred to an intelligence unit away from the battlefield and ostensibly to make use of her German skills in translating radio intercepts. With the Soviet snipers taking an increasing toll on the German forces, German Major Erwin Konig (Ed Harris) is deployed to Stalingrad to take out Vassili and thus crush Soviet morale. A renowned marksman and head of the German Army sniper school at Zossen, he lures Vassili into a trap and takes out two of his fellow snipers, but Vassili manages to escape. When the Red Army command learns of Konig's mission, they dispatch his former student Koulikov (Ron Perlman) to help Vassili kill him. However, Konig tricks Koulikov into revealing his position and kills him with a very skillful shot, shaking Vassili's spirits considerably. Khrushchev pressures Danilov to bring the sniper standoff to a conclusion. When Tania requests to be reassigned to the sniper division, Danilov asks Vassili to discourage her. Vassili attempts to do so but relents when Tania tells him how her Hebrew parents were murdered by the Germans. Danilov recruits young local boy Sacha Fillipov (Gabriel Thomson), who idolizes Vassili and does small jobs for the Germans in exchange for food, to act as a double agent by passing Konig false information about Vassili's whereabouts, thus giving Vassili a chance to ambush the Major. Vassili sets a trap for Konig and manages to wound him, but during a second attempt Vassili falls asleep after many hours and his sniper log is taken by a looting German soldier. The German command takes the log as evidence of Vassili's death and plans to send Konig home, but the Major does not believe that Vassili is dead. General Friedrich Paulus confiscates Konig's dog tags to prevent Soviet propaganda from profiting if Konig is killed and identified. In turn, König gives the general a War Merit Cross that was posthumously awarded to his son, a lieutenant in the 116th Infantry Division who was killed in the early days of the battle. Konig tells Sacha where he will be next, suspecting that the boy will tell Vassili. Tania and Vassili have meanwhile fallen in love. That night, Tania secretly goes to the Soviet barracks and makes love with Vassili. The jealous Danilov disparages Vassili in a letter to his superiors. Konig spots Tania and Vassili waiting for him at his next ambush, confirming his suspicions about Sacha. He kills the boy and hangs his body from a pole to bait Vassili. Vassili vows to kill Konig and sends Tania and Danilov to evacuate Sacha's mother (Eva Mattes) from the city, but Tania is wounded by shrapnel en route to the evacuation boats. Thinking her dead, Danilov laments his jealousy for Vassili and his resulting disenchantment with the communist cause. Finding Vassili waiting to ambush Konig, Danilov intentionally exposes himself in order to reveal the Major's position and is killed. Thinking he has killed Vassili, Konig goes to inspect the body, but realizes too late that he has fallen into a trap and is in Vassili's sights. He turns to face Vassili, who then kills him. Two months later, after Stalingrad has been liberated and the German forces have surrendered, Vassili finds Tania recovering in a field hospital.

The tale of the extraordinary life and times of Lucky, a horse that was born in captivity but achieves his dream of running free with the help of a stableboy. In 1914, a German supply ship is en route to Africa with a cargo of work horses when one of the mares gives birth to a foal. The colt is soon separated from his mother when the ship docks in a mining community, and he has a hard time getting along, but an orphaned boy who works at a stable takes a liking to the little horse and looks after him. When war breaks out, the stable is abandoned and the pony escapes into a nearby desert, where an Oryx antelope and a native girl become his companions and teach him how to survive on his own. —Mark Deming