One city, twenty arrondissements, how many stories possible? Over the centuries, the growth of Paris has gone hand in hand with the increasing diversity of its people and boroughs, constituting a unique cultural patchwork.  This fall, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy will screen a four-part film series, each one focusing on one of the many Parisian localities. From Hôtel du Nord, featuring the Canal Saint-Martin of the 1930s, to Paris Prestige, portraying a 2016 gentrifying Pigalle, the selected movies tell the story of la ville aux cent villages (the city of a hundred villages) by contrasting epochs, places and communities.

All films are in French with English subtitles.

This gripping first feature by Hamé and Ekoué, two rappers in leading French rap group La Rumeur, is a Paris-by-night tour that stays far away from the glimmer of the Eiffel Tower, offering instead an insider’s portrait of a vibrant, quickly gentrifying urban neighborhood, with its African hairdressers, Algerian groceries, tourists, neon sex shops, and every street scam known to man. But beneath its kinetic surface and groovy soundtrack, one finds a profound reflection on the struggles and disappointments of two generations of Algerian immigrants in France.

Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) comes across as a typical thug, making a living by stealing cars in order to resell them in Paris. Then one day, when a policeman forces him to pull over, Poiccard panics and shoots him dead. The act triggers a hot-pursuit police chase as Poiccard attempts to escape from his heinous crime. The pursuit would be short if not for Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) an aspiring journalist who hawks the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs Élysées and plays an ambiguous role in his run.