Paris 1940: Large armies are trampling on the heart of civilisation and cannon fire is once again taking its toll. Jacques Jaujard and Count Franziskus Wolff Metternich worked together to protect and preserve the treasure of the Louvre Museum. Alexander Sokurov tells their story. He explores the relationship between art and power, and asks what art tells us about ourselves, at the very heart of one of the most devastating conflicts the world has ever known. The film will compete in the Official Selection of the Venice Film Festival.
For a long time, until the arrival of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, the films of Alexander Sokurov (Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia, 1951) were banned from public screening by the censors. Sokurov has won many international awards including four FIPRESCI prizes, two Tarkovski Awards and the Golden Lion in Venice for his film Faust (2011), the fourth in his tetralogy on power. In 1995 the European Film Academy declared him to be one of the best film directors in the world.