Antonin Baudry & Simon Abkarian Talk French Box Office Hit ‘De Gaulle’: “The National Icon Did Not Exist In 1940”

Charles de Gaulle is arguably one of the most iconic figures in French history but for filmmaker Antonin Baudry, the story of how the wartime leader came to embody the French Resistance during World War II had largely been overlooked by filmmakers. With De Gaulle: Resistance and Liberty, an ambitious two-part historical epic, Baudry looked to revisit the extraordinary journey of a relatively obscure general who refused to accept France’s surrender to Nazi Germany in 1940.

The films will screen at The American French Film Festival in L.A. this year, where both instalments will be presented back-to-back on November 7 at the DGA Theater Complex. It will mark the U.S. premiere of the second part of the film, De Gaulle: Liberty, which will then be followed by a conversation with Baudry and actor Simon Abkarian who stars as De Gaulle in the film. Samuel Goldwyn Films is releasing the title in North America.

The $84M Pathé production, which was more than five years in the making, grossed more than $50M in France since its summer release, making it one of the year’s biggest box office hits in the country. The story opens in June 1940, as France collapses and signs the armistice and De Gaulle, a then little-known general, flees to London with one irrational conviction that the battle for France is neither over nor lost.

“The almost unbelievable story of the Free French, spanning from London to Africa to occupied France to the U.S., had never been shown in a film,” Baudry tells Deadline. “This story is epic, chivalric, tragic – and tragically comical. And, unlike Churchill, De Gaulle was almost a perfect unknown in film theaters.”

Baudry, a former French diplomat who made his directorial debut with submarine thriller Wolf’s Call, tapped into his past profession for the script, which he co-wrote with Bérénice Vila.

“The film actually doesn’t respect the codes of a biopic,” he says. “It all takes place in 1940 to 1942 – no flashbacks. There are three predominant characters: de Gaulle, [Winston] Churchill and Fernand [Bonnier de la Chapelle]. It goes from small bathtubs to epic battles, with Volker Bertelmann’s elegant, powerful music. We are very far from a biopic.”

His ambition, he adds, was straightforward: “I wanted to make a film I would love to see at any stage of my life.”

Baudry was keen to capture de Gaulle as the isolated and “bizarre” individual rather than the polished national icon from the history books. “The national icon did not exist in 1940,” he says. “Therefore, it shouldn’t exist in the film: that was simple. We remained loyal to the descriptions made by the people who met him in 1940 and to what they wrote in their journals. All of them were stunned by how bizarre the man was, whether they agreed with him or not.”

Baudry points out that at this point in history, de Gaulle was almost entirely alone in his conviction of refusing to surrender and this quality of isolation was something that Abkarian found fascinating when deciding to take on the lead role.

“I didn’t know how alone he was,” says Abkarian. “France had capitulated in front of the Nazi German army, and I didn’t know how isolated he was. I didn’t know he was condemned to death by the French Vichy army, and his nationality was taken away from him.”

He was equally struck by de Gaulle’s command of language and intellectual ambition, describing the general as a deeply educated man whose words were inseparable from his political vision.

“He spent his life eating paper and drinking ink,” says Abkarian. “His language was very clear, just like Churchill was at the time. They were educated and the language they had was the messenger for their vision.”

When researching his character, Abkarian admits that his main tool beyond the script was his own imagination. While he had read letters about people who had met de Gaulle and had described him as someone who is “very strange”, Abkarian built on that.

“He had his own theatrics in life, so the goal was not naturalism or realism,” he says. “He was building his own persona, so I had to play someone who plays that.”

In advance of the film’s U.S. bow on November 6 (the second instalment will launch December 4), Abkarian is hopeful that it will resonate with American audiences in that it’s a film that explores the moral choices made by individuals at moments when the odds appear overwhelming. He sees it as a story that explores the values of “courage, honor and resistance.”

“I think we have lost our moral compass, and this kind of film reestablishes the compass of morality, courage and honor,” he says. “People don’t pay attention to honor anymore and we desperately need that now.”

When pressed about what he hopes American audiences will take away from De Gaulle, Baudry is more straightforward: “Hope.”

The American French Film Festival in L.A. takes place November 3-8, 2026.