EXCLUSIVE: French mini-major Pathé is at the Cannes Film Festival this year with opening film Leave One Day, and well as Martin Bourboulon’s August 2021 Fall of Kabul-set action feature 13 Days, 13 Nights, which plays Out of Competition.
It follows on from a high-profile 2024 at the festival, when the company attended,with The Count of Monte-Cristo, which was a hit at home and when on to gross more than $100 million, as well as Emilia Pérez and Partenope among other films.
Amélie Bonnin’s musical film Leave One Day made history on Tuesday evening as the first debut film to open the festival across its 78 editions.
The romantic musical movie builds on Bonnin’s 2023 César-winning short film of the same name. French singer Juliette Armanet stars as a rising chef in Paris, who is forced to return to her small hometown to help out in her family’s roadside diner, when father suffers a heart attack. The unwelcome trip reconnects her with teenage crush Raphaël (Bastien Bouillon).
The film, which intermeshes performances of popular French pop songs and classics of the la chanson française with drama, went down a storm with the festival’s opening night crowd, and releases wide across France today.
Deadline sat down with Pathé President Ardavan Safaee ahead of the festival for a chat about the company’s decision to board the unusual film, plans for its release and upcoming productions.
DEADLINE: What Brought Pathé to Leave One Day?
SAFAEE: One of the magical things about this profession is those chance meetings. The film came to Pathé mainly thanks to its co-producer Sylvie Pialat. She didn’t produce Amelie’s short film but talked to me about it during the voting period for the Césars. I also fell in love with the short and voted for it too. Sylvie came back to me with the feature film. It’s a relatively small first film and might not seem like a good fit for Pathé, but at the same time, we have space for projects we fall in love with, that are out of the ordinary and deviate from pre-established patterns. Then, there was the meeting with the film and Amélie Bonnin. The team fell in love with the story and Amélie as well as what she is trying to recount. Part of our job, when we discover things that touch us on a personal level, is also being prepared to take a gamble on working with emerging directors, even if it’s on their first film, to discover new talents.
DEADLINE: Was the César for the short film also factor?
SAFAEE: There was the César, but also the cast with Juliette Armanet and Bastien Bouillon – with Juliette in her first lead role as an actress, even if she is a singing star in France – alongside fantastic established actors François Rollin and Dominique Blanc. There was also something very pop and new in the tone of comedy and the emotion. What I also liked is that for a first film, we don’t have the impression that it’s a first film. There’s a maturity in the storytelling. There was a mix of comedy, emotion and depth in the characters, with something very new, modern and very pop in its tone, which was fantastic. It’s a different type of risk from the financial one of The Count of Monte Cristo, but it’s still a risk, because on a first film, you’re never quite sure how the directors are going to work out.
DEADLINE: Does Pathé work with many first films?
SAFAEE: We’ve worked on a quite a few. Antonin Baudry’s The Wolf’s Call was a first film and we also recently released Maël Piriou’s Une Pointe d’Amour. We don’t have any rules, although of course we remain more cautious on first films than others. It’s always a question of the story, if it’s something we want to tell, if it touches us. Then if we’re prepared to take the artistic, narrative risk, we need to be more disciplined in terms of the budget.
DEADLINE: What was the budget for Leave One Day?
SAFAEE: Just over six million euros ($6.7 million).
DEADLINE: Was it one of the films financed under your co-financing partnership with Logical Pictures?
SAFAEE: Yes, it’s came under the deal we began in 2022, but which will come to an end this year.
DEADLINE: Aside from the fact it’s a first film, there’s also the unusual mix of drama and performances of pop songs and chanson française classics.
SAFAEE: It’s not a classic musical with people who dance and sing perfectly, that’s what interested us. The way the songs are introduced into story is very natural. For the audiences who know these songs, there will be nostalgia, and for those who don’t, I think that the sense of nostalgia will resonate. Also, the story is very much anchored in reality…it’s not a fantasy world, which is where some musicals can alienate audiences. We’re talking about normal people, with a type of magic. Apart from Juliette Armanet, who sings extremely well, the other cast members sing like you, or I might sing, it’s something that comes from the heart. It gives it a very intimate and authentic feel.
DEADLINE: Are there any plans to release a soundtrack?
SAFAEE: We will definitely exploit ‘Partir un Jour’, the track at the end of the film, which has been reorchestrated for the film, but we’re waiting to see how well the film does. If the film is a huge success, which we hope, we could very easily re-release a few tracks, or do something bigger. It would be in collaboration with Universal. It will depend on the public’s reaction. While it’s a film that will hold a lot of nostalgia for the French, it’s also a film that… will touch everyone. I think it’s a film that could generate a lot of remakes.
DEADLINE: As the opening film of Cannes, Leave One Day has to be released theatrically simultaneously in France under the festival rules. Does that complicate things in terms of positioning the film at home and setting up it up for international sales?
SAFAEE: It depends on your goals. For a film like this, the opening was perfect. It allowed us to shine a spotlight immediately, even if it gave us less time to plan for the release, which was originally scheduled for a month later. The immediate challenge on this film isn’t necessarily the international market right away, even if it’s an important challenge, but rather the French market. But yes, for English-language films that have not been sold, it can be a more complicated slot, because people will immediately see the results in France, and then act accordingly. The international stakes on this film are clearly not the same as our Musketeer films or The Count of Monte Cristo. But on this film, I think the opening slot will help sales.
DEADLINE: How many screens will Pathé release the film on?
SAFAEE: The night of the opening, lots of cinema theaters across France screen the opening ceremony and around 700 theaters, will show the film simultaneously. The next day, we’ll go back to a more “normal” release, with the film programmed in around 350 theaters for its national launch. We like to cover the whole territory. Depending on the film’s performance, we could increase the number of theaters in the second and third week.
DEADLINE: With The Count of Monte-Cristo, you worked a lot with its star Pierre Niney on social media to promote the film. Will you run a similar campaign with Juliette Armanet?
SAFAEE: She’s obviously a big star and in terms of marketing, that can serve us well, thanks to the community of fans who are out there. At the same time, we won’t do the same in-depth work as with Pierre Niney on Monte Cristo, because we had two, three months of possible promotion. Here, we only have two, three weeks. Everything is very concentrated, very compact. It’s also not the same public. Their fanbases are very different, and they have different ways of activating their community.
DEADLINE: Which leads on to the question… what is your target audience for this film?
SAFAEE: It’s not necessarily a film for teenagers or younger children, although the comedy element could draw a younger audience. The element of nostalgia will play well with the over-30s, especially those who are fans of Juliette Armanet. While the presence of actors like Dominique Blanc and François Rollin could draw in an older audience. The film talks a lot about inter-generational relationships, through the relationship between the father and the daughter [who is in her early 40s], which will appeal to both these generations. Our efforts will be initially focused on urban audiences, but since the film takes place in a roadside diner in a village, this also gives us scope to broaden the audience. I think it will be a city-based, cinephile audience in the first instance, which we will look to expand, using the spotlight of the Cannes opening.
DEADLINE: Pathé’s other upcoming films include Martin Bourboulon’s fall of Kabul drama 13 Days, 13 Nights, which comes out in June, and then there is Antonin Baudry’s two-part bio-pic De Gaulle. When will that come out?
SAFAEE: They will come out in 2026. The two parts won’t be as spaced out as The Three Musketeers films [which were released with eight-month gap between them in 2023]. We’ll release them more tightly, six to eight weeks apart. I don’t know which date yet. We’re in the middle of post-production on both films at the same time.
DEADLINE: In the past, you talked about making English-language films out of France, and wider Europe. Has this idea advanced?
SAFAEE: Absolutely. We’ve just announced Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière’s adaptation of Les Rois Maudits, The Accursed Kings, which we’re developing in English. We also have other projects we’re working with the new company of Dimitri Rassam (producer of The Count Of Monte-Cristo, The Musketeers) specialized in English-language films out of France. We’re going to partner with him on these films to co-finance and distribute. I think we’re going to start up again the in UK, with Pathé UK. Today, the team there is focused mainly on series. We’re going to remobilize, to get back on track with English-language films there too.
DEADLINE: That’s an interesting development. Pathé’s move away from film in the UK in 2023, sent shockwaves through the industry…
SAFAEE: The market has changed a lot post-Covid. There are opportunities opening up again today, that are more significant because, even creatively, I find that films have recently taken over from series in terms of originality and creativity. And I see films today that are more original, that are taking a few more risks. And if there are producers who are willing to carry these these projects, we will also support them on our side at Pathé UK. I want to us to pick up where we left off. And from this year, I hope, to reconnecting with all the producers and talent there to start developing there again. We’re discussing it, and the idea is to have a team in place this year to start working on it.
DEADLINE: This is good news for the U.K film industry. Pathé’s move away from film in the UK in 2023, sent shockwaves through the industry…
SAFAEE: We didn’t leave because we didn’t like it. We left because our business model no longer worked on the films we were making. And I think we were waiting to see how the market was doing over time, to see if there was anything new… Did it make sense to make films in English again? Was there a market for it? And I think we already miss it too much, and on the one hand, we see that there is new talent. It’s goes beyond the UK. I think it’s more European than that, it’s more global. I also see that there is… There may be a lack of original films in the United States and the talents, American actresses, actors, are also starting to work on films in Europe, because we can offer new things. So yes, I want there to be a team in England, but I want it to be a team that is not only focused on English films, but also European films in the English language.
DEADLINE: Could U.S. President Donald Trump’s Talk Of Tariffs Impact This Strategy?
SAFAEE: I don’t really understand what it means in concrete terms. We have our ambitions and plans for cinema and to make them in French and English… and we’ll figure it out.
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