The veteran director will attend Macron's state dinner with Chinese president Xi Jinping ahead of the China release of his latest film, disaster epic 'Notre-Dame on Fire,' on Friday.
is a docu-realist disaster epic that reconstructs the events surrounding the real-life conflagration that engulfed Paris’s world-famous Medieval cathedral in 2019. Starring Samuel Labarthe, Jean-Paul Bordes and Mickaël Chirinian, the film combines actual footage of the blaze with cinematic reconstructions to tell the story of how the fire was put out and how some of the landmark’s most precious artifacts were courageously rescued. It was released in France last spring and earned $5.
Beijing-based film executive Sélim Oulmekki, originally from France and formerly with Chinese company Hishow Entertainment, brought the project to Chinese financier and distributor Jialin Culture and Media back in 2020. “I read the script and felt this would be a really great film for China. It’s a thrilling, straightforward story about the rescue of Notre Dame, which is one of the first places Chinese people go when they visit Paris.
“Recently, there only have been Chinese titles, Hollywood films and Japanese anime releasing in China, so it’s hard to predict how we will do,” Oulmekki adds. “But it’s a great film with very appropriate IP for China, so we’re quite hopeful and excited.”