Dir. Sylvain Chomet
2025 | 90 mins | France, Belgium, Luxembourg | French with English subtitles
Laurent Lafitte, Géraldine Pailhas, Thierry Garcia, Anaïs Petit

In Sylvain Chomet’s animation A Magnificent Life, French playwright, filmmaker, and inventor Marcel Pagnol at 61 appears very close to giving up on his career, so a younger Marcel comes to the rescue. When asked to write a memoir, Pagnol simply can’t do it––not without the help of hope and optimism personified in the figure of young Marcel.

Like most biopics, the animation pays tribute to its subject, making Pagnol a man at ease with the times, embracing the medium of cinema when his theatre colleagues were too sceptical to try. The director of The Triplets of Belleville creator dons rose-tinted spectacles.

“A gorgeous, decidedly dewy-eyed heritage hagiography.” Screen

Preview screening as part of the French Film Festival.

Venue: Studio 74, Exeter Phoenix

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