Jean-Jacques Annaud brilliantly films the fire of the queen of cathedrals

From April 15, 2019, on the evening of the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris, Jean-Jacques Annaud smelled the great film to be made on this global cultural trauma. It’s done with Notre Dame is burning, on screens Wednesday, March 16, three years after the disaster. The director of The fire war juggles between reality, relying on documentation passed with a scalpel, and fiction, in the reconstruction with actors. A great film staged with flame.

Neighbors of Notre-Dame de Paris notice smoke above the cathedral and warn the authorities. Checks do not detect any outbreak of fire, while a major fire threatens the structures of the 13th century. Once detected, the rescue is organized in a lack of preparation and multiple hazards. At the heart of the drama, the firefighters, men and women who will save, at the risk of their lives, a spiritual and cultural jewel of the world.

Accustomed to perilous and large-scale filming, Jean-Jacques Annaud is perfectly suited to reconstruct the tragedy of Notre-Dame. He finds the narrative material in the catastrophic progression of the disaster, making the event a collective adventure. If we know today the outcome of the story, discovering those who made it, at their side, as if in direct contact, in a staging inhabited and involved at all times, results in a film the height of the disaster.

An apprentice in charge of fire surveillance at the cathedral, an absent general manager with a laptop running out of battery, emergency services blocked by traffic jams… Jean-Jacques Annaud goes through the chain of events that led to the fall of the Viollet-Le-Duc spire, and to safeguard the works of art, the crown of thorns, the facade and most of the building. The action scenes seem to have been taken on the spot, the flames come out of the screen, we go up and down the stairs with the firefighters, we attend emergency meetings… Jean-Jacques Annaud is at the heart of the subject and the transcribed extensively.

Everyone remembers where he was when he heard the news. Notre Dame is burning tells us what was happening on the ground as we followed the event on the media for days. We sometimes wonder how Annaud was able to shoot certain images. The intervention on the screen of the mayor of Paris or the president of the Republic, actors of their own role, brings even more veracity to the whole. But it is the reconstruction of the sinister, the investment of all the participants in the film which reflects on its undeniable quality, informative, visual, critical and lyrical. Splendid.

Kind : disaster
Director: Jean Jacques Annaud
Actors : Samuel Labarthe, Jean-Paul Bordes, Mikaël Chirinian, Jérémie Laheurte, Dimitri Storoge
Duration : 2:00
Country : France
Exit : March 9, 2022
Distributer : StudioCanal

Summary: Jean-Jacques Annaud’s feature film reconstructs hour by hour the incredible reality of the events of April 15, 2019 when the cathedral suffered the most significant disaster in its history. And how women and men will put their lives at risk in an incredible and heroic rescue.