At a glance
- From: France, with the Danish company Zentropa as co-producer
- Year: 2025 (Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard)
- Length: about 1 hour 45 minutes
- Language: French and Danish, with subtitles
- For fans of: The Brutalist, Borgen
In July 1982, France launched an architecture competition for a new monument in Paris. It received 424 anonymous projects from all over the world. When the winner was revealed, few people knew his name: Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
In May 1983, President François Mitterrand chose his design: a giant, hollow cube, about 110 metres high, at the end of the great historical axis that starts at the Louvre and passes under the Arc de Triomphe. A modern triumphal arch, dedicated not to military victories but to humanity.
The Great Arch tells what happened next. Claes Bang, the Danish actor who learned French for the role, plays Spreckelsen. Sidse Babett Knudsen (from Borgen) plays his wife, Liv, and Xavier Dolan plays Jean-Louis Subilon, the civil servant who must make the project work for the government; both characters were invented for the film. Spreckelsen has to face politicians and administrators, and his marriage suffers.
Director Stéphane Demoustier worked for more than ten years making films about architecture before this one. At the 2026 César Awards, the French film prizes, it won two awards, for visual effects and set design, and was nominated in several other categories, including best actor for Bang and best supporting actor for Dolan.
If you know the real story, you already know that it does not end well for Spreckelsen. He resigned in 1986 and died the next year, before the Arch was finished. Not everything in the film works as well: one critic found the role of his wife, invented for the film, almost unnecessary.
Where to start
Before watching, look at a photo of the Grande Arche from the Louvre, at the end of the long straight line through Paris. After the film, you will never see that view in the same way.
If you like this, try these from Europe
- Playtime 🇫🇷 (1967): Jacques Tati’s comedy about a modern Paris of glass and steel. Funny and beautiful.
- Mon Oncle 🇫🇷 (1958): Tati again, with Monsieur Hulot lost in his sister’s ultra-modern house. A gentle film about architecture and the people who must live in it.
- The Belly of an Architect 🇬🇧🇮🇹 (1987): Peter Greenaway’s film about an American architect who slowly falls apart while preparing an exhibition in Rome.
Where to find it in Europe
- Free with a library card: Filmstriben in Denmark (as Den nye triumfbue) and Cineasterna in Sweden.
- With a subscription: Canal+ in France, Filmin in Spain (as El arquitecto), Be TV Go in Belgium and Polsat Box Go in Poland.
- To rent: ARTE Boutique in France, Picl in the Netherlands and Timvision in Italy.
- Read the book: the film is based on the novel La Grande Arche by Laurence Cossé, published by Gallimard in 2016.
The European context
The Grande Arche was inaugurated on 14 July 1989, for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, as the “Grande Arche de la Fraternité”. A French president chose a Danish architect, who covered his cube in Italian marble from Carrara: it was a very European building from the start. The film itself is a French and Danish co-production, shot in the Paris region, Denmark and Italy. As Demoustier says, nothing is created without political will.
Watch the trailer: https://www.ugc.fr/film.html?id=17301
Also on Choosing Europe
- Film: Quisling: The Final Days (Quislings siste dager) 🇳🇴: another European film based on real people and real history.
- Film: Grand Tour 🇵🇹: another European film where the images are as important as the story.
