23/09/2025 - Pierre Schoeller delivers a captivating film about a nuclear researcher whose thoughts on the climate crisis are subject to a mysterious and compelling overhaul

"The person you are, the person you become, the person you choose to be." An individual trajectory, as if transfixed by the dawn of a new day in a modern world which is looking down the barrel of a future full of unpredictable turbulence, is at the heart of Pierre Schoeller’s fascinating, intriguing and intelligent movie The Rembrandt Syndrome [+see also:
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film profile], which is released in French cinemas on 24 September via Zinc. It’s a multi-faceted film of great depth, following determinedly in the engaged, citizen-focused vein which is so dear to the director (Versailles [+see also:
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interview: Geraldine Michelot
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film profile]), and revolving around a Joan of Arc-style, whistleblowing lead character who’s also surreptitiously navigating far more ethereal waters when it comes to perceptions of the visible and the invisible, and who further plays her part in a very human love story.

"There’s something wrong, there’s someone else." Forty-somethings Yves (Romain Duris) and Claire (Camille Cottin) have been living harmoniously for over 25 years, both in their private lives (they’ve got a twenty-something daughter played by Celeste Brunnquell) and professionally speaking (they’re engineers in the nuclear field). But a strange event unfolds when they visit room 22 in the National Gallery in London (during downtime from a trip to the power station under construction at Hinckley Point): Claire slips into some kind of mystical trance when she sees three Rembrandt paintings (Old Man in an Armchair, Self Portrait at the Age of 63 and Portrait of Hendrikje Stoffels), detecting some kind of crime within them. It’s a wholly disconcerting and worrying episode for Yves, especially since Claire is usually a "serious, precise, solid" character. She expresses these qualities in her job as a researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission, where she throws herself into clandestine research into the potential impact of the "extremes of the extremes" - statistically improbable (yet wholly possible, as per the rogue waves or the 51° heat dome in Lytton, Canada, in 2021) climactic phenomena - on France’s nuclear plants (in 2029, 2060 and 2100). But there will be consequences for communicating the fruits of her investigation and Claire’s life will take a new turn…

Enthralling and remarkably well-researched, The Rembrandt Syndrome is a rugged work which doesn’t offer itself up to viewers willingly, but which actually regularly wrong-foots them, whilst also appealing to individuals’ extra-sensory sides and to collective consciousness of the climate and energy crisis which is currently at an advanced stage of gestation. Flirting with the fantastical (directly referencing Stanley Kubrick) and carried by an imperious Camille Cottin (who’s subtly flanked by Romain Duris), the film is also masterfully ensconced in a chiaroscuro atmosphere (with Nicolas Loir heading up photography). The fact that it’s slightly moralising and holds up an unvarnished mirror to civilisation will doubtless prove annoying for some people, who would rather live in denial, corruption or blind optimism, but for others, like Claire, who can’t "settle for a half-life", it will be like a "light which no longer fades in the night when we’re alone and we close our eyes."

The Rembrandt Syndrome was produced by Trésor Films in co-production with France 3 Cinéma, Les Productions du Trésor and Belgian firm Artemis Productions. Playtime are overseeing world sales.

(Translated from French)