For his entire life, Johan Otto von Spreckelsen was obsessed with squares and cubes, so everything he had ever built was a square or a cube… The competition for [La Grande Arche] was the biggest prize in architecture at the time. For someone [unknown] from Denmark to win it was… he sort of came out of the mist. — Claes Bang
Close out the AFI Fest 2025 presented by Canva with the North American premiere of THE GREAT ARCH, written and directed by Stéphane Demoustier. Not a biopic about an architect per se, this very French story of the creation of the landmark structure at La Defense in Paris is an engaging tale about aesthetics, bureaucracy, politics, and the price of idealism. Claes Bang stars as Spreckelsen, with excellent support from Sidse Babett Knudsen as Liv von Spreckelsen, Michel Fau as French President François Mitterrand, Swann Arlaud as architect Paul Andreu, and Xavier Dolan as diplomat Jean-Louis Subilon.
See info and link below for details.
THE GREAT ARCH
Written and directed by Stéphane Demoustier
AFI Fest presented by Canva
Sunday, October 26, at 8 pm
Chinese Theatre
6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles
fest.afi.com/2025/the-great-arch
Claes Bang quote from his interview with Melanie Goodfellow, Senior International Film Correspondent for Deadline, Cannes 2025.
Stéphane Demoustier, The Great Arch / L’Inconnu de la grande arche (2025), from top: Swann Arlaud, Xavier Dolan, and Claes Bang; Sidse Babett Knudsen and Bang; L’Inconnu de la grande arche French poster, with Michel Fau (right) and Bang; Dolan and Arlaud.
Film stills courtesy and © Le Pacte.
