New Charles de Gaulle Biopic Begins Filming in Paris, Heads to Morocco

Late July marked the start of filming for a new two-part biopic on the life of General Charles de Gaulle. The Gare de l’Est is the filming location. On August 1st, the crew took up residence on the Place du Panthéon. On Friday, August 11th, it headed to the Place Denfert-Rochereau. The crew will continue filming in Paris in the second half of August. It will set up its cameras in Normandy and then in Morocco to film sequences for this film inspired by the book by the Briton Julian Jackson, De Gaulle, a certain idea of France. Antonin Baudry (The Wolf’s Call, 2019) is the director.

Simon Abkarian, a French actor and playwright of Armenian origin, plays the lead role. The actors Niels Schneider (in the role of General Leclerc), Thierry Lhermitte and Karim Leklou are expected to play alongside him. The budget for this new film, which should be titled France Libre, is estimated at 50 million euros. Pathé Films is producing it. The story would cover the first half of the 1940s, because "it is at this time that de Gaulle becomes the de Gaulle we know, a national hero. We will explore his successes, his failures, the crises he overcomes, his relations with Churchill and his actions to liberate France thanks to the colonies," Ardavan Safaee, president of Pathé Films, had declared in Variety in July 2021.

"It’s de Gaulle seen from London, over the period 1940 to 1944. He is an extremely strange individual who arrives on the English scene, whom no one really understands what he is doing or what he wants. We want to try to have this point of view that is not the one we are used to in France [...] It is rather to see him from the outside. See what happened in this period which is in fact very complex and quite unknown," Antonin Baudry told Allociné. The release of the film is not, for the moment, specified. According to Le Point, the release of the first part seems scheduled for February 5, 2025 and that of the second part (filmed at the same time as the first) for February 4, 2026.