Daniel Auteuil, a lawyer on the edge
As an actor, he’s had nine feature films at Cannes, including the magnificent Huitième Jour (The Eighth Day), which earned him the Best Actor award in 1996, but this is Daniel Auteuil’s first time in the Official Selection as a director. Le Fil (An Ordinary Case), a courtroom drama with a thriller element, and filmed in the South of France at the Draguignan law court, is presented as a Special Screening.
Actor, co-screenwriter (with Steven Mitz), and director of his own film, renowned French actor Daniel Auteuil juggles his multiple roles to direct and portray Jean Monier, a disillusioned criminal lawyer on the brink of retirement. In the defendant’s seat, actor Grégory Gadebois (Coupez! 2022, Les choses simples 2023) takes on the role of Nicolas Milik, an aimless family man wrongly accused of murder. As he advocates in his defence, the disillusioned lawyer rediscovers the meaning of his vocation and his life.
With Le Fil, Daniel Auteuil brings us his fifth feature film after La Fille du puisatier (The Well-Digger’s Daughter 2011), a remake of Marcel Pagnol’s 1940 film, as well as Fanny (2013) and Marius (2013) released the same day and cinematic adaptations of the Provençal author’s Marseille trilogy. In 2018, the comedy Amoureux de ma femme (The Other Woman) was also based on a play by Florian Zeller, L’envers du décor. Le Fil is an adaptation too: that of the novel Au guet-apens : chroniques de la justice pénale ordinaire by the great criminal defence lawyer Jean-Yves Moyart alias, Maître Mô. The novel first captivated Nelly Auteuil, the director’s daughter and former lawyer, who produced the film alongside screenwriter and director Hugo Gélin.