Two long-lost brothers reunite in their native village in Lot-et-Garonne on the evening of the presidential election. A fiction-concept filmed and broadcast live this evening from 7 p.m., until the announcement of the result of the second round.
On April 24, 2022 at 7 p.m., while the French are preparing to discover the face of their next President of the Republic, Julien, in his thirties, lives in a small town in the south of France. That evening, he is expecting Felix, his younger brother, whom he has not seen for several years. Business engineer, the latter arrives from Melbourne to settle administrative formalities related to the death of their mother some time earlier.
On this particular day, Félix absolutely insists on slipping his ballot into the ballot box, unlike Julien, disillusioned by the political class. Everything opposes the two brothers, and the mood of the reunion will hang on the results of the vote. Félix, steeped in remorse at having missed his mother’s funeral, has not seen his older brother for five years, during which Julien stayed at the bedside of their sick mother, putting his own life on hold.
During this critical hour in the life of the country, the two brothers will live a poetic, sensitive and heartbreaking adventure, which will be played out in the streets that saw them grow up, at the town hall, in the village bar and in their childhood home. . What they don’t know yet is that at 8:00 p.m., when the name of the next President is revealed, their fraternity will be turned upside down…
Illustrated by a beautiful poster created by Ugo Gattoni, Jour de Gloire, written and directed by the directors and actors Cosme Castro and Jeanne Frenkel, illustrates the reunion of these two brothers who have not seen each other for five years, i.e. the duration of a presidential mandate, the evening of the result of the second round of the elections.
The title, taken from a quote from La Marseillaise, is described as “quite cynical“by the director.”And at the same time, it’s a day of glory for these two brothers who find themselves. It translates both the cynicism of the moment and speaks of their history.“
Tour and broadcast live on site arte.tvYouTube and Facebook, this live fiction was imagined by the two creators in the continuity of their collaborative project entitled La Comète, combining artistic performances and new technologies.
“With Jeanne, we’ve been making live films for seven years, we call it meta-cinema” comments Cosimo Castro. “At the beginning, when we started doing that, it was very abstract for a lot of people, because the live existed but it was exploited in a rather rare way. Since the context of COVID where a lot of things have developed live on the internet, it has helped people understand what we were doing. We are very happy because Jour de Gloire is the most ambitious project we have ever done.“
For the preparation of the film, the team settled for a year in residence in a small town in Lot-et-Garonne, chosen for its architecture and its layout, whose name is deliberately kept quiet in order to preserve the privacy of the filming. “It was perfect for making a kind of Cinecitta, but on a human scale, in which you could walk from the town hall to the bar, in the house“, continues the director.
Their challenge: to make a film consisting of a one-hour sequence shot shot live, from 7 p.m. to 8:05 p.m. this Sunday, in the form of a stroll through this village where the two lost brothers meet. A team of around sixty people, several cameras
“It’s quite an incredible staging device. We’re coming back from two days of rehearsals where we tried to do the whole film in one continuous thread, it’s very exhausting, but it’s fascinating because once it starts to break in, you have the impression of seeing, seen from the sky, a snake wandering through the village.“A whole ultra-minute choreographic ballet which is organized between the actors, the technical team and the music, performed live from a food-truck located in the set by the electro artist Flavien Berger.
In the casting, four actors accepted the challenge: Félix Moati (No Man’s Land), Julien Campani (who had collaborated with the duo on their play Dot Nemo), Julia Faure (Mytho) and Kamel Abdessadok (L’Elan). “As always with Cosme and Jeanne, I feel like they’re calling you to hold up“, laughs Julien Campari, who had already played for the duo at the theater. “It’s always a dimension of the impossible.” Félix Moati did not know them, and the infeasibility of the project convinced him to do so. “It’s a gigantic technical challenge, a way of telling the world through fiction that seems irresistible to me.“
“I only hit last week before the first reading that it was going to be shot live, it just seemed so crazy to me” added Julia Faure. “We have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen since we’re only going to play it once, in one take. We will discover the film ourselves by playing it, it’s very exciting.“A vertiginous challenge which will end with the revelation of the identity of the new President of the Republic unveiled live through fiction, at the same time as on the news channels continuously.
“An election night is an evening to remember, these are moments that we remember very well“, comments Jeanne Frenkel. “We remember precisely who we were with, these are often family moments moreover, with our loved ones. This film aims to create a memory for the two brothers in fiction and at the same time in the lives of the spectators who will watch it, we hope.“