The Great Arch () is a 2025 French biographical drama film written and directed by Stéphane Demoustier, based on Laurence Cossé's 2016 novel La Grande Arche.Jean-Baptiste Morain, "'L'Inconnu de la Grande Arche' : le portrait tendre d'un homme obstiné". Les Inrockuptibles, 17 May 2025.Matthew Joseph Jenner, "Cannes 2025 review: L'inconnu de la Grande Arche (Stéphane Demoustier)". International Cinephile Society, 18 May 2025. It stars Claes Bang as Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, the Danish architect who won the 1983 competition for the design of the Grande Arche in Paris despite being virtually unknown.Jordan Mintzer, "'The Great Arch' Review: Claes Bang Captivates as an Unknown Danish Architect Battling French Bureaucrats to Build His Monumental Work". The Hollywood Reporter, 16 May 2025. The cast also includes Sidse Babett Knudsen, Xavier Dolan, Swann Arlaud and Michel Fau.

The film had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on 16 May. It was theatrically released in France by Le Pacte on 5 November.

Plot In 1982, French President François Mitterrand launches an anonymous international competition to design a monumental building on the historic axis linking the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. To general surprise, the winning entry comes not from one of the world's major architectural firms but from Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, a 53-year-old architecture teacher from Copenhagen who is unknown in France and has previously built only a handful of structures, including his own house and three small chapels.

Overnight, von Spreckelsen is put in charge of the largest building project of the era, the Grande Arche de la Défense, which he affectionately calls his "cube". Determined to see the structure built exactly as he first envisioned it, he clashes repeatedly with the realities of French bureaucracy, represented chiefly by project administrator , and with the pragmatic French architect Paul Andreu, who is brought in to oversee the building's technical execution. His uncompromising attachment to his original design, including a marble cladding that proves both structurally troublesome and hugely expensive, increasingly isolates him from the project's engineers and financiers. When the 1986 legislative elections bring a new, right-wing government to power in cohabitation with Mitterrand, the political backing that had protected von Spreckelsen evaporates. The film ends on a bleak note: worn down by the years-long conflict, von Spreckelsen dies before the Grande Arche is completed, which is inaugurated two years later.Matthew Joseph Jenner, "Cannes 2025 review: L'inconnu de la Grande Arche (Stéphane Demoustier)". International Cinephile Society, 18 May 2025.

Cast

Claes Bang as Johan Otto von Spreckelsen Sidse Babett Knudsen as von Spreckelsen's wife Liv Xavier Dolan as Swann Arlaud as Paul Andreu Michel Fau as François Mitterrand Micha Lescot as Leloup Jean des Forêts as Alain Juppé

Production Bang was cast in the lead role despite not speaking French, as von Spreckelsen himself was not a French speaker, and carefully rehearsed the script to ensure that he would be able to perform it.Melanie Goodfellow, "Claes Bang On Stéphane Demoustier's French-Language Cannes Film 'The Great Arch': 'The Really Weird Thing Is I Don't Speak A Word Of French.'". Deadline Hollywood, 17 May 2025.

Release The film had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on 16 May.Samuel Douhaire, "Cannes 2025 : "L'Inconnu de la Grande Arche", une reconstitution palpitante au casting impeccable". Télérama, 16 May 2025. It was theatrically released in France by Le Pacte on 5 November."L'inconnu de la Grande Arche : découvrez la bande-annonce du film qui sortira en novembre". Défense 92, 31 July 2025.

Response

Box office It grossed $2.2 million at the box office.

Critical response Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "Demoustier's depiction of the long — it took seven years from start to finish — and sordid affair behind The Great Arch's construction is a tale of lost illusions, with von Spreckelsen as a misguided genius who won the architectural lottery and wound up paying a hefty price for it. There are some clever bits of humor throughout the movie, especially involving all the shenanigans of the French, but the Dane's story ends on a decidedly dark note."

For Cineuropa, Fabien Lemercier wrote that "Skilfully navigating the paradoxical dimension of his subject, tracing the path of an individual with a very human radicalism (particularly attached to hand-drawing) in the midst of a number of fairly specific professional twists and turns (regularity of joints, fixing points, foundations, support, glued glass, nitrate staining of Carrara marble, experiments, search for solutions, etc.), Stéphane Demoustier succeeds in expressing the most sensitive nuances for an uninformed audience using a patina of comedy that does not spare the French presidential royalty and its procession of senior civil servants. It's a "marriage of the dull and the shiny" that gives the film its seductive balance, its zest and its charm."Fabien Lemercier, "Review: The Great Arch". Cineuropa, 16 May 2025.

Accolades Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Cannes Film Festival 16 May 2025 Un Certain Regard Stéphane Demoustier Lumière Awards 18 January 2026 Best Film The Great Arch Best Director Stéphane Demoustier Best Actor Claes Bang Best Screenplay Stéphane Demoustier

References

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