The Great Arch

In 1983 a competition opens in Paris: a vast structure is to be built at the end of La Défense. It is won by a Danish architect nobody has heard of. Johan Otto von Spreckelsen has built a few churches, and is quiet and stubborn. He comes to Paris and tries to carry the project through. Against him are ministries, engineers, the budget, and a political will that changes over time. The building is finished; Spreckelsen does not see it open. Stéphane Demoustier writes and directs. Claes Bang plays Spreckelsen, with Swann Arlaud, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Xavier Dolan. The source is Laurence Cossé's 2016 novel La Grande Arche. The subject is not architecture but how long an idea can survive inside institutions. Spreckelsen refuses to compromise, and every refusal moves him a little further from his own project. The telling is calm and distant; there is no large emotional scene, the fights happen in meeting rooms, and the architect's collapse is shown quietly. The great building programme of the Mitterrand years sits behind it, treated not as decor but directly as a relation of power. It screened in Un Certain Regard at the 2025 Cannes film festival. Who it is for: viewers interested in architecture and in calm drama about institutional obstruction. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the conflict is verbal, and the character's inner life is deliberately kept closed.