“I'm not interested in your little strategies and calculations: I'm an architect”. This is the destiny of a man whom no one knew, yet who was chosen to design one of the world's most important engineering structures at the end of the 20th century. Stéphane Demoustier has decided to set this destiny in cinematic marble with The Great Arch, unveiled in Un Certain Regard at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. A captivating tale of the confrontation between artistic passion and the balance of power embodied by the principle of reason of state, political upheavals and economic constraints, adapted from a book by Laurence Cossé and constructed with great finesse by the French filmmaker, like the score of a fugue punctuated by the repetition of motifs and the creation of variations, all in an almost tragicomic tone accessible to a wider audience than the technical circle of intellectuals and architecture buffs.

His own house and four churches: that was the very slim record of Danish teacher Otto von Spreckelsen (Claes Bang) when, in 1983, to everyone's surprise and thanks to the innovative and daring nature of his project, he won the competition initiated by the French authorities for the future CICOM (Carrefour international de la communication) at La Défense, on the outskirts of Paris. Protected and spurred on by the President François Mitterrand (Michel Fau) and supported by the technocrat Jean-Louis Subilon (Xavier Dolan) and soon by the local architect Paul Andreu (Swann Arlaud), here comes our idealistic hero with a strong character in a position to realise his life's work, this Cube that others prefer to call The Great Arch. But while the prospect is exhilarating, the project is enormous, the deadlines very tight, the details crucial, the bureaucracy inhibiting, the lies and corruption in ambush, and the forces and interests at play are very powerful in the face of a man who is almost alone (accompanied by his wife, played by Sidse Babett Knudsen) in his stubborn quest for crystalline perfection...

Skilfully navigating the paradoxical dimension of his subject, tracing the path of an individual with a very human radicalism (particularly attached to hand-drawing) in the midst of a number of fairly specific professional twists and turns (regularity of joints, fixing points, foundations, support, glued glass, nitrate staining of Carrara marble, experiments, search for solutions, etc.), Stéphane Demoustier succeeds in expressing the most sensitive nuances for an uninformed audience using a patina of comedy that does not spare the French presidential royalty and its procession of senior civil servants. It's a “marriage of the dull and the shiny” that gives the film its seductive balance, its zest and its charm.

The Great Arch was produced by Ex Nihilo (France) and co-produced by Zentropa Entertainments (Denmark), Le Pacte (which is also handling international sales) and France 3 Cinéma.