Early 1980s. Big ideas collide with big personalities, and a grand building meets a grand city. Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen, entirely unknown in France at the time, wins the Grande Arche competition initiated by the ambitious president François Mitterrand, to create a building aligned in perspective with the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. An ascetic and an outsider, always faithful to his craft and artistic vision, von Spreckelsen has previously designed several modernist churches in Denmark. The Grande Arche is his magnum opus and a “dedication to humanity”. Soon he moves to Paris with his wife Liv to wrestle with bureaucracy, the bitterness of the art of construction, cultural and linguistic differences, political tides. He tries to find answers to how far reality allows compromise, and whether, as the officials say, paper will indeed tolerate anything.

Movie is in French, Danish, English with subtitles in Latvian.

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Distributor: Riga IFF
Director: Stéphane Demoustier
Cast: Claes Bang, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Xavier Dolan
Links: IMDB

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