21/04/2023 - The Brazilian auteur makes the upgrade to Competition after his Un Certain Regard victory, for this very British tale of King Henry VIII’s final surviving wife

“Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded survived.” So goes the rhyme traditionally taught to young schoolchildren in the UK, introducing them to the iconoclastic early-modern King Henry VIII and the sad fates of his six wives, setting the table for the study of history overall. And European cinema seemingly can’t get enough of monarchism currently, with Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry [+see also:
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film profile] opening this year’s Cannes, following up auteur and awards vehicles like The Favourite [+see also:
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interview: Marie Kreutzer
interview: Marie Kreutzer
film profile] and Spencer [+see also:
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film profile]. For his highest-profile project to date, Brazilian-Algerian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz is getting in on the trend with Firebrand [+see also:
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film profile], a suspenseful study of the “survived” part of that rhyme, with Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl [+see also:
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Adapted from Elizabeth Fremantle’s best-selling historical novel Queen’s Gambit by screenwriters Jessica and Henrietta Ashworth, the film takes as its main dramatic context Henry VIII’s vacillations of religion, which initially led to England’s break from Papal Italy and the Catholic Church, after which he resumed a largely pro-Catholic position. Parr’s primary motive for marrying Henry is to try and convert him, and the kingdom overall, to greater Protestant sympathies, and the story takes on a thriller- and horror-inflected tone as it tracks her “remarkable will to not only survive, but thrive” under the tyrannical king.

The cast also includes seasoned British thesps Sam Riley, Eddie Marsan and Simon Russell Beale, alongside newcomers Ruby Bengal and Erin Doherty. Hélène Louvart, one of the most highly respected working in her field, is director of photography, and Dickon Hinchcliffe, formerly of the British group Tindersticks, will deliver a surely lush musical score.

The film is a UK-US co-production, staged by producers Carolyn Marks Blackwood, of Magnolia Mae Film, and Gabrielle Tana, of Brouhaha Entertainment. Anna Sheehan, of MBK Productions, executive-produces. No sales agent has been announced yet.

Aïnouz had a belated career breakthrough with The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão [+see also:
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interview: Karim Aïnouz
film profile], the 2019 Cannes Un Certain Regard winner, which secured him the widest distribution of, and greatest acclaim for, any of his work to date. In a recent interview with Terra Brasil, translated from the Portuguese, he said, “It is an immense joy to be at Cannes again, a festival that has always accompanied my work and Brazilian cinema. Firebrand is the portrait of a unique woman, Catherine Parr, a visionary who changed the course of English history but never had her life told in the cinema, despite her immense and influential trajectory.”