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“Le Faux Soir,” a Belgian-French WWII resistance drama from “Bullhead” director Michaël R. Roskam, has been set as the closing night film of this year’s San Sebastián Film Festival.
Playing in the festival’s Official
Selection out of competition, the film will have its European premiere at San Sebastián after world premiering at Toronto, where it screens in Special Presentations. It will close the festival after the awards ceremony on Sept. 26 at the Kursaal.
“Le Faux Soir” is produced by Belgium’s Frakas Productions and Roskam’s Harbor Men Pictures with France’s Rectangle Productions. Goodfellas handles international sales, while Cinéart will release the film in Benelux.
Set in Nazi-occupied Belgium in 1943, the film follows a group of Resistance fighters after the occupying forces turn national daily Le Soir into a propaganda outlet.
With commemorations of the 1918 Armistice banned, they hatch a plan to produce a fake edition of the newspaper, reproducing its paper, nameplate and format but filling its pages with articles mocking the German occupiers. The operation has been described as “the world’s first media hack.”
Arieh Worthalter (“The Goldman Case”) leads the ensemble, alongside Mélanie Thierry (“Da 5 Bloods”), Karim Leklou (“Jim’s Story”), Mara Taquin (“Zero Fucks Given”), Bouli Lanners (“The Night of the 12th”), Julien Frison (“The Happening”) and François Damiens (“The Bélier Family”).
The closing berth brings Roskam back to San Sebastián 12 years after his U.S. crime drama “The Drop,” starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and James Gandolfini, which won the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay in 2014.
Roskam, who previously worked as a journalist for Dutch-language newspaper De Morgen, broke through internationally with feature debut “Bullhead.” After premiering in Berlin’s Panorama section, the film earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film and landed Roskam on Variety’s Ten Directors to Watch list.
He later directed “Racer and the Jailbird,” starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Adèle Exarchopoulos, which screened out of competition at Venice and was selected as Belgium’s Academy Awards entry. He also helmed the first three episodes of Apple TV+ miniseries “Black Bird.”
“Le Faux Soir” returns Roskam to the thriller territory that has marked much of his career. Roskam wrote the screenplay, with Bernard Falaise co-credited on dialogue, loosely adapting Marie Istas’ book Le “faux” Soir, 9 novembre 1943.
The 74th San Sebastián Film Festival runs Sept. 18-26.
