“There’s something in the air.” This is what Swann Arlaud answers us, smiling, when we ask him how to explain the preponderance of films dealing with collaboration and resistance at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. The day before our interview, the actor climbed the steps to present Our salvationby Emmanuel Marre, in competition for the Palme d’Or. He plays the director’s great-grandfather, Henri Marre, who was a provincial inspector in the France of Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime, in the middle of the Second World War.
This is not the only film in the selection to take a close interest in this dark period of French history. Out of competition, Antonin Baudry came to present the first part of his ambitious diptych, The Battle of Gaulle: The Iron Age. This blockbuster (more than 70 million euros budget for the two films) follows the arrival of General de Gaulle in London in 1940 and the establishment of the resistance organized around Free France.
“The Third Night”, “Moulin”, “Fatherland”…
On the same theme, we were also able to see, in the Cannes Première section, The Third Nightby and with Daniel Auteuil. This highly mastered historical thriller, with remarkable photography by Jean-François Hensgens, looks back on the exfiltration of 108 Jewish children from the Vénissieux camp (Rhône). The director plays Father Glasberg, determined to save as many prisoners as possible from the roundup, while Antoine Reinartz plays the role of an official of the Vichy regime who will gradually question his allegiance to the power in place.
In competition, we also found Millby Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes, focused on the last days of Jean Moulin, played by Gilles Lellouche. The film, which features a game of cat and mouse between the leader of the resistance and his executioner, Klaus Barbie (played by Lars Eidinger), aims to show Jean Moulin as a heroic but fallible man, who worries about breaking under torture.
Fatherlandanother film in the running for the Palme d’Or, focuses on the moral fallout of the Second World War, this time across the Rhine. The film tells the story of the return of writer Thomas Mann (1875-1955) to Germany in 1949. After being exiled in Switzerland and France when Adolf Hitler came to power, then in the United States during the conflict, he and his daughter Erika must confront an unrecognizable homeland, devastated by defeat, but still consumed by Nazi ideology.
Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski films as usual in sumptuous and rigorous black and white and visually isolates his characters, in the middle of a crowd or alone under imposing historical monuments, as if to better underline their alienation in a country with which they are now out of step.
“Seeking truth in the present”
On the subject of the Second World War, the strongest and singular proposition of this 79e Cannes Festival, however, remains that of Emmanuel Marre. Our salvation surprises with a unique formal device. With harsh lighting, a hand-held camera and actors using contemporary phrasing, the film defies many codes of period film. Swann Arlaud explains to us that the director “was looking for a truth, a truth in the present, because we tend to look at history from above. But how does it happen when you live it, but don’t know the end?”
The actor seen in Anatomy of a fall (2023), Thanks to God (2019) or Little Peasant (2017), one of the most exciting and engaged in current French cinema, admits to having been intrigued by the incarnation of this man who is both banal and enigmatic. A failed and selfish entrepreneur, “patriot of management”as it is described in the film, the ideological motivations of which we do not always understand.
“Is he a fervent Petainist to the end? Is he an opportunist? Is he acting by conviction? Is he acting out of cowardice? Emmanuel Marre also asks himself these questions.
“The character asks a question to which I had no answerindicates Swann Arlaud. Why, until the end, did he hold his line? Is he a fervent Petainist to the core? Is he an opportunist? Is he acting by conviction? Is he acting out of cowardice? If he’s an opportunist, why didn’t he turn his coat around when he felt the wind was turning? The starting point is still someone who existed and Emmanuel (Marre) also asks himself these questions.”
Emmanuel Marre’s screenplay is based on the correspondence between his ancestor Henri Marre, inspector at the Commission for the Fight against Unemployment in Limoges (Haute-Vienne), and his wife Paulette (whose role is played by Sandrine Blancke). The actors then improvised during the majority of the scenes, which explains the directing style and modern language. “Anyway, from the moment we worked in improvisation, we couldn’t change our way of speaking. It was impossible”justifies Swann Arlaud. An unusual process for a period film, which gives it great spontaneity… and a disturbing contemporaneity, just like the anachronistic music which punctuates Our salvation.
“Obviously, the film echoes the present”
In a context of global extreme right-wing, a few months before the presidential election in France, the preponderance of films on this dark period of our history raises questions. Also released in March Rays and shadowsby Xavier Giannoli, biopic dedicated to collaborator Jean Luchaire.
At the film’s press conference MillMonday May 18 in Cannes, a journalist from the online media Paroles d’honneur judiciously underlined this historical parallel: “The National Rally, founded by collaborators of Klaus Barbie, has a chance of coming to power. Do you think that it is essential today, in order not to betray the memory of Jean Moulin, to resolutely fight the National Rally? The film crew kicked in: “I don’t have an answer to that, sir.”Gilles Lellouche simply responded, while László Nemes continued: “We are really not here to comment on French politics.”
Swann Arlaud is less reluctant to emphasize the “zones of resonance with what we are experiencing today”particularly at the language level. “It’s terrifying because the resistance fighters were called “terrorists”. Today, we have the “ecoterrorists”. The “work value” is very Petainist, that. At the moment, it’s coming up a lot. And the national preference… Obviously, the film echoes (the present).”
The sad banality of evil
The moral rigor and aesthetic radicality of Our salvation recall the shock caused by another film about the Second World War, The Area of Interestawarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2023. With Jonathan Glazer, the horror of the camps remained outside the frame, but interfered in the story notably through meticulous work on the sound, while Our salvation operates a sort of verbal off-camera.
His characters, most of the time confined to their offices, see the ugliness of their actions kept at bay by the administrative, technical and sometimes incomprehensible jargon they use: stocks, statistics, groups, etc. A reminder that the horror of totalitarian regimes is not always as blatant and immediate as one might believe.
“These are all these taboo places in familiesspecifies Swann Arlaud. It is said that he “worked on the fight against unemployment, etc.” But wait, what does that actually mean? What was the fight against unemployment in Vichy in 1942? Let’s have a look. Ah yes, so we sorted the workers, we sorted the foreigners, we made groups and so there was the “collection” of hundreds of Jews, but to go where?»
As The Area of Interest, Our salvation highlights the sad banality of evil and invites the viewer to question their own moral compass. “It’s an invitation to look at oneself, to look at one’s family history and the history of the country.believes Swann Arlaud. To look at the past, but also at the present.”
Obviously, if history were to repeat itself, “it won’t happen in the same way, because it’s not the same century, it’s not the same peopletempers the actor. We don’t know what might happen. But what we can look at are the facts. We ask ourselves: “Are we reliving the 1930s?” At the time, it was more Adolf Hitler than Leon Blum. Here too, currently, we are witnessing a demonization of the left. So, factually… Let’s look at what happened in those years and where, as a spectator, we can see resonances, bridges. The idea is that everyone questions themselves about this.”
Swann Arlaud uses the analogy with a trial: “We are not bringing the verdict. What we bring is education. We say: “So this is what happened.” But it’s like (the show) “Strip-Tease”, that is to say we show, but we don’t judge. And suddenly, as a spectator, we can receive things and form our own opinion.” At the end of the gala screening in Cannes, as the audience’s applause rang out in the Grand Auditorium Louis-Lumière, Emmanuel Marre was content with a simple and unequivocal declaration: “Never again.”
