15 Robert Bresson Movies, Ranked Best to Worst

Diary of a Country Priest is an adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Georges Bernanos. An ailing priest joins the clergy of a rural French community. His secluded lifestyle and unsociable demeanour makes him unpopular among the locals, which, coupled with his sickness, causes him to start losing his faith.

Fontaine is a prisoner spending his days at a Nazi prison. However, he is devising an elaborate escape plan, despite the fact that he sees another prisoner getting executed after a failed escape attempt. He soon receives a cellmate, a 16 year old who had joined the German army. Fontaine is not sure whether he can trust him with the escape plan.

In the French countryside, a baby donkey is adopted by few young children, Jacques and his sisters, who live on a farm. They care for him, and even baptize the animal, but when one of them dies, their family vacates the farm, and the donkey’s life turns upside down as he is given away to local farmhands who ill-treats him, and forces him to work very hard.

Pickpocket is a crime drama film about a young boy who develops pick-pocketing as a hobby, and is soon arrested by the cops. His friend Jeanne offers him support so that he can quit this habit, but it seems too late.  

Set in a rural French village, this coming-of-age drama film tells the story of a young girl named Mouchette, whose father is an alcohoic and mother is seriously ill. While returning from her school one day, Mouchette gets lost in the woods after a rainstorm begins. She takes shelther in the hut of an alcoholic poacher, but he rapes her. She manages to escape but by the time she reaches home, her mother’s condition worsens and she passes away.

A fake 500-Franc note passes through the hands of several people and eventually reaches the hands of an innocent man. The man soon finds himself in trouble as he does not realize that the note is not genuine.