Director: Stéphane DEMOUSTIER

Cast: Claes Bang, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Xavier Dolan

Rating: TBC (To Be Confirmed)

1982. French President François Mitterrand decides to launch an international architectural competition for the flagship project of his mandate: the Great Arch of La Défense, aligned with the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. Against all odds, Otto von Spreckelsen, a Danish architect, wins the competition. Overnight, this 53-year-old man, unknown in France, arrives in Paris where he is propelled at the helm of this pharaonic project. While the architect intends to build the Great Arch exactly as he envisioned, his ideas quickly clash with realistic constraints and the vicissitudes of politics.

This film is a creation freely inspired by real events that occurred between 1983 and 1987. The role attributed to the architect’s wife, the private life situations and the dialogues are fictional.

The Great Arch was selected for the Official Competition in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Xavier Dolan, who appears in the film, plays Jean-Louis Subilon, a French civil servant involved in the project. Dolan is known for his acclaimed films such as Mommy (2014), which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and I Killed My Mother (2009), which won the Youth Prize at Cannes.


106 mins, In French with English subtitles

France, 2025

History, Drama
Presented by: 

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