05/09/2025 - VENICE 2025: Akihiro Hata’s debut feature delves into a dystopian construction site, blending social themes with an eerie atmosphere

The feature debut by Akihiro Hata, Grand Ciel, selected in the Venice International Film Festival’s Orizzonti section, focuses on Vincent (Damien Bonnard), who works the night shift on a construction site. In actual fact, this “site” is a futuristic city district, which is supposed to be an engineering masterpiece. However, that promise quickly begins to fade when a worker mysteriously disappears, leaving Vincent and his colleagues with questions and suspicions about a cover-up. Soon after, when another worker goes missing, the tension escalates even faster.

The most striking element of this futuristic site, called Grand Ciel, is what Hata himself described with some carefully chosen words: “That omnipresent concrete, cold and mineral, whose floating dust, like a relentless toxic fog, seeps into every crack, threatening to engulf you – while the giant construction site keeps growing and growing, at all costs.” The ability to turn these words into filmic reality is perhaps the greatest achievement of Grand Ciel, which is nevertheless a film that does its best to run, but instead tends to limp along here and there. All of the component parts are above-par in terms of their quality, but at times, the movie’s technical precision seems to outweigh its emotional depth, creating a small, yet noticeable, discrepancy.

That being said, the film weaves in a strong social undercurrent. French – or partially French – productions often excel at addressing social issues without becoming heavy-handed, whether it’s because they mix in comedy or thriller elements (such as last year’s extraordinary Night Call [+see also:
film review
interview: Michiel Blanchart
film profile]). In this case, Hata’s effort is very appealing owing to the fact that it blends a futuristic aesthetic (that of the buildings in the promised district) with a very realistic storyline and characters, who utter well-written, believable dialogues. The skilled delivery of the lines by an overall well-chosen cast enhances the script, written by the director together with Jérémie Dubois.

The masterful environment, built with the help of cinematographer David Chizallet and production designers Aurore Casalis and Mathieu Buffler, could be viewed as an example of how a film of this genre should be envisioned and developed. In this respect, Grand Ciel could be described as a masterpiece. 3D films didn’t enjoy resounding success over a decade ago, for multiple reasons, but here, there’s a strong tactile dimension, as if the surfaces and spaces we see can be touched and smelled. The shades of blue and grey, melding together with the yellow and white tints coming from the artificial lights on the site, will definitely live on the audience’s minds.

Ultimately, Akihiro Hata has orchestrated these disparate elements superbly for a feature debut, even though the overall feeling is that the film may lack a bit of “heart”, as it’s all about the “head”, leaving us with a subtle sense of distance. Maybe a stronger emotional resonance could have made it a more fully rounded cinematic gem.

Grand Ciel was produced by France’s Good Fortune Films and Luxembourg’s ​​Les Films Fauves. WTFilms handles its world sales.