Overview
- The film by Stéphane Demoustier opens on Wednesday, November 5, with Claes Bang in the lead and roles for Sidse Babett Knudsen, Xavier Dolan, Swann Arlaud, and Michel Fau as François Mitterrand.
- It portrays how a 1983 presidential competition placed the little‑known Danish architect at the center of a flagship project on Paris’s Axe historique, with the Grande Arche inaugurated in 1989 after his death in 1987.
- Coverage describes clashes between Spreckelsen’s vision and French administrative demands, including the involvement of engineer Paul Andreu, with accounts of his resignation from the lead role later in the project.
- Reported figures from the investigative source material cite a near 3.5 billion‑franc public cost and roughly 2,000 French skilled workers on the build.
- Demoustier emphasizes precise chronology and secured a rare permit to film at the Élysée, with critics framing the movie as a well‑documented thriller first shown in Cannes’s Un Certain Regard.