For the past few weeks in Paris, passers-by have been able to see here and there the shooting of a two-part historical film dedicated to Charles de Gaulle and directed by Antonin Baudry (Le Chant du loup, 2019). It all started at the end of July near the Gare de l’Est where we saw extras dressed as Nazi soldiers and a car covered with an FFI flag (the French Forces of the Interior, created in 1944 to bring together the various military groups internal resistance). Then the team took over the Place du Panthéon on August 1, where a reconstruction of occupied Paris in 1940 was spread out in full view of surprised tourists.
While filming will continue in Paris in the second half of August, the team will then leave in September to shoot in Normandy and then fly to Morocco. Although the posters for local residents indicate the title of the work being shot (De Gaulle part 1 and 2), the fact remains that Pathé, which is producing this diptych for an estimated budget of 50 million euros, remained quite discreet about the launch of this shoot. The project had in fact been announced in July 2021 in Variety, where an article mentioned the preparation of this two-part biopic inspired by the book by the British Julian Jackson, De Gaulle, a certain idea of ????France. Ardavan Safaee, president of Pathé Films, said that the story would cover the first half of the 1940s because “that’s when de Gaulle became the de Gaulle we know, a national hero. We will explore his successes, his failures, the crises he overcomes, his relationship with Churchill and his actions to liberate France through the colonies. »
French actor and playwright of Armenian origin, the charismatic comedian has played in Casino Royale, where he played the role of James Bond played by Daniel Craig, and in The Army of Crime, a historical film by Robert Guédiguian in which he played the great resistant Missak Manouchian.
Forced to put himself more in the light with this new status of director, Antonin Baudry thus confided to Allociné his intentions of staging concerning this diptych on the years of resistance of Charles de Gaulle: “It’s de Gaulle seen from London, over the period from 1940 to 1944. It is an extremely strange individual who arrives in the English landscape, of which nobody understands very well neither what he does nor what he wants. We want to try to have this point of view which is not the one we are used to in France (…) It is more a question of seeing it from the outside. See what happened during this period which is in fact very complex and relatively unknown. »
For now, the release of the first part seems scheduled for February 5, 2025 and that of the second part (shot at the same time as the first) for February 4, 2026. But, in the film industry as in historical destinies, things are always subject to change and evolve.
