25/03/2025 - Starring Souheila Yacoub, Yile Vianello and Vassili Schneider, the film is a French-Italian co-production by Gogogo Film and Graffiti Film

Two young actresses who are gaining increasing ground within European cinema are also playing the lead in L'Age d’or, a French-Italian co-production and first work by French director Bérenger Thouin, on which filming began on 10 March in Turin. Souheila Yacoub, the European Film Promotion’s Shooting Star of 2022, made her debut in Climax [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Souheila Yacoub
film profile] in 2018  before moving on to the series Savages [+see also:
series review
interview: Souheila Yacoub
series profile] and films such as The Salt of Tears [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Souheila Yacoub
film profile], Making Of [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cédric Kahn
film profile] and Dune: Part Two. She was then nominated for the Best Newcomer César thanks to Planet B [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Aude Léa Rapin
film profile]. Italy’s Yile Vianello - awarded the Best Italian Newcomer David di Donatello Award in 2024 - made her debut in 2011 at just 12 years of age, in Corpo celeste [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alice Rohrwacher
film profile], and was recently seen in La chimera [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and The Beautiful Summer [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. The two daughters of the century who spend the first part of the 1900s tossed around by history and by the world’s ups and downs, are joined by the young Canadian actor Vassili Schneider who was recently seen in The Count of Montecristo [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].

L’Age d’or was written by Thouin himself, together with Mehdi Ben Attia (who directed The String [+see also:
trailer
film profile], I’m Not Dead [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Of Skin and Men [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). Set in 1944, the movie uses original archive footage as a backdrop against which the flesh and blood actors play their parts. In France, Countess Jeanne de Barante (Yacoub) has fallen into the hands of a group of soldiers and is being led towards the place of her execution. Over the course of this journey towards death, Jeanne thinks back on her story and the capricious fate which drove her to this end. From her childhood spent in her parents’ butcher’s in the French provinces in the early 20th century to the years she lived in Paris, alone and in poverty; from her encounter with the intrepid, elusive and passionate Celeste (Vianello) to the spiralling vortex of the Great War; from her reunion with the young count, Guillaume de Barante, who was party to the mistake she made in her youth, to their business in Brazil when coffee became all the rage in the roaring Twenties… Right up until her return to France, when Jeanne finally fulfilled her dream of going home to the village of her birth in the shoes of a countess…

The production team’s communiqué further describes it as: “A fascinating romp with accents of a soap opera or picaresque novel which foregrounds the full visual power of the archive footage, which is used as an animated context in which the film’s flesh and blood actors evolve to tell the adventure-filled story of a female anti-hero called Jeanne and her good friend Celeste”.

With filming set to move to South-West France next week, courtesy of Martin Roux (Bitten [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Romain de Saint-Blanquat
film profile]) heading up photography, the movie is being produced by Carine Rusznieski on behalf of Gogogo Film and by Enrica Capra for Graffiti Film, with support from Eurimages, the Italian Ministry for Culture’s Film Department, the Piedmont Region – Piedmont Film TV Fund, the CNC, Canal+, Ciné+ OCS, the Occitanie Region, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, the Department of Lot-et-Garonne, the Department of Charente, and Cinéventure. International sales will fall to Films Boutique, while distribution will be managed by Pyramide Distribution in France and by I Wonder Pictures in Italy.

(Translated from Italian)