This new biopic on De Gaulle currently being filmed has found its interpreter… You’ll never guess!
After Oppenheimer and Napoleon, here is the next biopic event on a historical figure! This project announced more than 2 years ago is finally starting filming, according to information from Satellifacts. This is the biopic dedicated to General De Gaulle.
And the choice of its main actor is finally announced: Simon Abkarian will put on the costume!
SND / Iris productions On the left, Lambert Wilson in the costume of General De Gaulle / On the right, his future interpreter, Simon Abkarian
The last actor to have taken on the role of General De Gaulle on the big screen was Lambert Wilson, in 2020, in the film by Gabriel Le Bomin, simply named De Gaulle (photo and video above). But by the way, who are the previous actors who played the president before Simon Abkarian and Lambert Wilson?
As Satellifacts specifies, Niels Schneider and Thierry Lhermitte will also be in the credits of this ambitious film provisionally titled La France libre, produced by Pathé.
The film will be more precisely a diptych, and for which we are promised a new point of view. “It is De Gaulle seen from London, over the period from 40 to 44. He is an extremely strange individual who arrives in the English landscape, of whom no one understands very well either what he is doing or what he wants. .
We want to try to have this point of view which is not the one we are used to in France – which is a bit like the one we can have on a historical monument, almost a great figure of a paternal superego.
It’s more about seeing it from the outside. See what happened during this period which is in fact very complex and relatively unknown.“This is what its director and co-screenwriter Antonin Baudry revealed to us when we met him during the preparatory period for the film, in August 2021.
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This project will be based primarily on British historian Julian T. Jackson’s book, De Gaulle: A certain idea of France. “This biography includes a lot of testimonies of the time, sometimes unpublished. It shows that he is a complex figure, very far from what we imagine.” And to add: “This is one of the sources, but there are many others. It’s a real work of history.“
“In France, it’s very difficult to make films about politicianscontinued the filmmaker at our microphone. There is a very different look from the one you can have in countries like Denmark, Sweden, the United States or Spain.
We really have a very family relationship, very infantilized — I find — political power. As a result, it is very difficult to have a perspective in a film. So it’s a bet that is both difficult and that also relies on the mediation of an outside perspective.“
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The film will be in 2 parts, and shot in continuity. “This lends itself dramatically. And I find that we are at an interesting moment on formats, at a moment of reflection. Having two films makes it possible to explore the complexity of a subject over time, without making a soap opera, and that interests me“, developed Antonin Baudry.
Recall that Antonin Baudry is the director of the noticed Chant du loup, with François Civil, Omar Sy and Mathieu Kassovitz, released in February 2019, and which had brought together 1.5 million spectators.