A Man of His Time (Notre Salut)

A shattering political masterwork and French box-office phenomenon, A Man of His Time (Notre Salut) comes to CIFF for a rare opportunity to discover Emmanuel Marre's acclaimed film.

In 1940, Henri Marre arrives in Vichy with aspirations to publish his manuscript "Our Salvation", which he hopes will save France from collapse. Day after day, he dedicates himself to the collaborationist regime, as a minor but strategic element in the Vichy ministry of labour.

Directly inspired to filmmaker Emmanuel Marre by the discovery of his great-grandfather’s letters and essay “Notre Salut” (Our Salvation), A Man of His Time is a dryly honest and precise depiction of moral 'compromission' and, more specifically here, collaboration with the Nazis. Henri Marre advocated the application of engineering methods to the running of the state with the goal of lifting France out of the 1940 debacle (its catastrophic, rapid military collapse and surrender). Was Marre’s deification of administrative and political efficiency - blindly placed at the service of an authoritarian order - a means of escaping his own personal failures?

Hoping to contribute to an effort to push back against the seemingly unstoppable current rise of the far-right in France, and with the April 2027 presidential elections threatening to gravely upset Europe’s balance, Marre junior makes sure that A Man of His Time feels and looks, despite the berets and brooches, terribly contemporary. An astounding achievement that has taken the French box office by storm.

Winner of the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival.

This screening is supported by the French Embassy in Ireland.