In « Our Salvation », Swann Arlaud plays a Vichy official against the backdrop of « Live Is Life ».
Our Salvation , the new film by Emmanuel Marre starring Swann Arlaud, will be released in theaters on September 30, 2026. By blending archival footage with songs from well after the Occupation, the director seeks less to recreate the era than to evoke its underlying mechanisms. The use of » Live is Life , » in particular, accompanies a scene that juxtaposes popular jubilation with Nazi salutes.
A civil servant dedicated to his career
The story takes place in Limoges, under the Vichy regime. Swann Arlaud plays Henri Marre, a Pétainist civil servant in charge of combating unemployment. He hopes to use his local position to advance within the administration and is compliant with the Nazis. At the same time, he eliminates those who resist him.
Among the decisions depicted in the film is the dismissal of an employee who had incurred expenses deemed excessive after providing sanitation facilities and hay to deportees. This episode illustrates how ordinary administrative decisions could contribute to the regime’s violence.
The character is inspired by the real Henri Marre, the filmmaker’s grandfather. The film is adapted from the correspondence between him and his wife. It does not portray a great leader, but rather a man driven by career advancement, whose ambitions are intertwined with his Pétainist convictions.
Anachronistic songs in the face of archives
The soundtrack plays on the contrast. Among the three tracks used in the film is Live is Life , a hit by the Austrian group Opus released in 1984. The song accompanies archive footage showing a crowd welcoming Marshal Pétain in Limoges, with Nazi salutes.
This contrast between familiar music and brutal historical images is central to the film’s approach. Director Emmanuel Marre explains in the production notes that these juxtapositions, in his view, can bring the viewer closer to a present-day experience. The film also uses a track by Alphaville during a party scene.
These choices are not intended to obscure the historical context. Rather, they avoid reducing it to a predictable musical recreation. By juxtaposing songs associated with another era with archival footage from the Occupation, the film creates a tension between everyday life, propaganda, and political violence.
A form somewhere between fiction and archives
The directing reflects this approach. The images are shot handheld during the day and with a flash at night. Swann Arlaud plays a central role, and some scenes allow for improvisation. Archival footage is interwoven into the narrative, while the dialogue shifts from everyday life to political issues.
Awarded the Best Screenplay prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Our Salvation aims to show the inner workings of a dictatorship through the actions and choices of a civil servant. The film notably addresses the administrative vocabulary used to describe the arrests of Jews and the normalization of evil on an individual level.
Source: HuffPost: continuous news and offbeat information from France and around the world (www.huffingtonpost.fr)
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Author: Valentin Etancelin
