Dir: Antonin Baudry | France, Epic drama 2026
There are historical epics that strive for spectacle and those that seek to understand the forces that shape history. De Gaulle: J’écris ton nom, the second instalment of Antonin Baudry’s ambitious diptych, firmly belongs to the latter. It is less interested in battlefield heroics than in the lonely, exhausting politics of legitimacy, asking how a nation without territory, an army or a government ultimately reclaimed its voice.
Covering the decisive period from 1943 to the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, the film charts Charles de Gaulle’s struggle to convince the Allies that France deserved to emerge from the war not as a liberated dependency but as a sovereign power. It is a film about persuasion rather than conquest, and about one man’s extraordinary refusal to accept that his country’s destiny should be decided in Washington or London.
Baudry, drawing heavily on Julian Jackson’s acclaimed biography De Gaulle: Une certaine idée de la France, wisely avoids embalming his subject in patriotic reverence. Instead, de Gaulle is portrayed as a towering yet deeply complicated figure: aloof, obstinate, infuriating to allies and colleagues alike, but animated by an almost mystical conviction that France remained France regardless of occupation. Jackson’s central argument—that de Gaulle’s greatest weapon was not military power but an unwavering belief in national legitimacy—runs through every frame.
The screenplay demonstrates unusual confidence in its audience. Rather than presenting a straightforward chronological account, Baudry interweaves three complementary strands. The first follows de Gaulle’s increasingly fraught diplomatic campaign against Roosevelt’s hostility and Churchill’s fluctuating support as he battles General Henri Giraud for leadership of Free France. These scenes possess the taut rhythms of a political thriller, where victories are won through words, timing and sheer force of personality.
Running alongside this is the story unfolding inside occupied France itself, where the fragmented Resistance slowly coalesces into a united political movement. Here the film broadens its canvas beyond famous personalities, illustrating that liberation depended as much upon anonymous organisers, couriers and fighters as upon statesmen abroad. Their sacrifices provide the moral foundation beneath de Gaulle’s political ambitions.
The third strand is perhaps the film’s most inspired: the incorporation of original wartime newsreels and documentary footage into the drama. Rather than appearing as decorative inserts, these archival images are woven seamlessly into the narrative, blurring the boundary between reconstruction and historical record. The transitions are handled with remarkable elegance. Contemporary footage expands the dramatic world instead of interrupting it, reminding viewers that behind every carefully composed scene stood real people living through extraordinary uncertainty. It lends the production an immediacy that conventional historical dramas often struggle to achieve.
These three narrative threads converge with increasing emotional force as Paris prepares for liberation. By the closing movement, diplomatic intrigue, clandestine resistance and historical documentation have fused into a single cinematic argument: that history is forged simultaneously by political vision, collective sacrifice and the inexorable momentum of events themselves.
Visually, J’écris ton nom is consistently captivating . The cinematography favours muted wartime palettes—greys, olive greens and subdued blues—that evoke both official archives and period photography without descending into nostalgic imitation. Interiors are framed with geometric precision, underscoring the rigid hierarchies of wartime diplomacy, while the streets of occupied France possess a lived-in authenticity rich in texture and atmosphere. The Liberation sequences achieve genuine grandeur not through overwhelming spectacle but through carefully judged accumulation, allowing emotion to emerge organically from faces in the crowd as much as from military triumph.
The performances anchor the film’s intellectual ambitions. Simon Abkarian gives an exceptional portrayal of Charles de Gaulle, resisting the temptation to reduce him to a monument. His de Gaulle is austere, often emotionally opaque, yet quietly magnetic. Small gestures—a measured pause before answering, a barely perceptible tightening of the jaw, the deliberate cadence of his speech—reveal a man who understands that patience can be as formidable a weapon as rhetoric. Abkarian captures not merely the famous silhouette but the psychological isolation of a leader repeatedly dismissed by his allies yet incapable of abandoning his vision.
The supporting cast is equally assured. Churchill emerges neither as simple ally nor antagonist but as a pragmatic statesman balancing admiration with frustration, Simon Russell Beale (speaking perfect French) plays him with a mischievous grin but commanding authority, while Roosevelt’s scepticism towards de Gaulle is rendered with nuance rather than caricature. General Giraud becomes more than a historical footnote, embodying the competing futures that confronted France before liberation.
The title itself carries deeper resonance than first appears. J’écris ton nom echoes Paul Éluard’s celebrated Resistance poem Liberté, whose repeated refrain culminates in the final revelation of the word “Liberté”. Throughout Baudry’s film, that poetic invocation becomes more than a literary reference. It serves as the emotional key to the narrative, suggesting that freedom is not merely achieved through military victory but continually asserted through language, memory and political resolve. The allusion enriches the film without ever feeling forced, quietly binding together its historical and emotional dimensions.
Those expecting rigid documentary fidelity should recognise where drama inevitably enters. Many private conversations between de Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt and Giraud are necessarily imagined; historians know the participants, the issues and the outcomes, but rarely their precise words. Negotiations that unfolded across weeks are compressed into more immediate confrontations, while some secondary officials and Resistance figures are amalgamated into composite characters to keep the narrative focused. Emotional tensions are sharpened for dramatic effect.
Yet these are differences of method rather than meaning. Baudry remains remarkably faithful to the historical interpretation advanced by Julian Jackson. The essential political conflicts, the Allied suspicion of de Gaulle, the struggle to unify the Resistance, the establishment of the Conseil National de la Résistance, and the determination to ensure France emerged as a sovereign victor rather than an occupied territory all reflect the historical record. Even where dialogue is invented, it almost always serves documented ideas rather than fictional ones.
What ultimately distinguishes De Gaulle: J’écris ton nom is its refusal to reduce history to hagiography. Baudry presents de Gaulle not as an infallible national icon but as a profoundly difficult, often isolated figure whose certainty frequently bordered on obstinacy. The film argues, persuasively, that this very stubbornness may have been indispensable. Had de Gaulle been more accommodating, France’s post-war status might have looked very different.
By the final scenes, as archival images merge with dramatic reconstruction and Éluard’s invocation of liberty resonates beneath the unfolding events, the film achieves something increasingly rare in historical cinema. It reminds us that nations are shaped not only by armies and treaties but by ideas, symbols and individuals prepared to defend them long before victory seems possible.
Richly acted, visually elegant and intellectually rigorous, De Gaulle: J’écris ton nom stands as one of the most accomplished historical dramas of recent years—an absorbing meditation on leadership, legitimacy and the enduring power of belief.
IN UK CINEMAS from FRIDAY
