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1-2 Special Acquires Emmanuel Marre’s ‘A Man Of His Time’
Distributor 1-2 Special has secured the rights to release Emmanuel Marre's feature film across North America following its debut in the main competition section at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. The production received the Best Screenplay award and garnered additional recognition from multiple festival juries, with theatrical release anticipated for 2027.
The narrative is set during Nazi-occupied France in 1940 and follows a 49-year-old attempting to establish himself within the Vichy regime's administration. Based on the director's family history, the story examines how individuals navigate and adapt to authoritarian systems, beginning with the protagonist's pursuit of personal advancement before confronting deeper questions of survival and escape as circumstances deteriorate.
In short
- Distributor 1-2 Special acquired North American theatrical rights to Emmanuel Marre's 'A Man of His Time' following its Cannes premiere
- The film won Best Screenplay and three additional awards at Cannes 2026; release scheduled for 2027
- Period drama set in 1940s Vichy France follows a man seeking position within the fascist regime, inspired by Marre's great-grandfather
Explained simply
Emmanuel Marre is a French director whose feature film 'A Man Of His Time' premiered in the main competition section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Screenplay. The work draws on Marre's own family history to explore how individuals make choices and adapt when living under authoritarian rule.
The narrative is set in Nazi-occupied France in 1940 and centres on a 49-year-old man seeking to establish himself within the Vichy regime's administration. The Vichy regime was the French state that collaborated with Nazi Germany following France's military defeat, and represented a complex environment where citizens navigated questions of survival, security and personal advancement. The protagonist's story begins with his ambitions for gain but develops as circumstances deteriorate, forcing him to confront deeper questions of survival and escape.
Through this character-driven narrative, Marre examines the moral complexity of how ordinary people respond to authoritarian systems when their circumstances grow dire. By grounding these themes in a specific historical moment and his own family's experience, the director creates a study of survival during one of Europe's most turbulent periods.