Emmanuel Marre’s A Man of His Time, winner of the Best Screenplay prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has secured North American distribution through indie boutique company 1-2 Special.
Cannes Winner Heads to North America
Emmanuel Marre’s A Man of His Time has been acquired by New York-based boutique distributor 1-2 Special for all North American distribution rights, with a theatrical release planned for 2027.
The acquisition follows the film’s acclaimed debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered on the ninth day of the festival in the main competition. Cannes remains the industry’s most prestigious showcase for international cinema, and A Man of His Time emerged as one of the festival’s standout titles.
The film closed its premiere screening with an 11-minute standing ovation before winning the Best Screenplay prize. It also received the Prix des Cinémas Art et Essai, a Special Mention from the Prix de la Citoyenneté jury and the CST Award for Best Artist-Technician.
A Man of His Time marks Marre’s sophomore feature as a director following several short films. It is also his second appearance at Cannes. His debut feature, Zero Fucks Given, co-directed with Julie Lecoustre, premiered in Critics’ Week in 2021 and won the Gan Foundation Award.
A Personal Story Set Against Wartime France
The film has been described as “an absorbingly intimate, novelistically detailed procedural about the day-to-day, moment-by-moment lives of the Vichy administrators after the fall of France.” The story draws directly from the life of Marre’s own great-grandfather.
Set in September 1940, the film follows Henri Marre, played by Anatomy of a Fall star Swann Arlaud, as he arrives alone in Vichy just as France’s Nazi-collaborating government begins consolidating power. Broke, separated from his family and carrying copies of his self-published manifesto, Notre Salut (“Our Salvation”), the 49-year-old is determined to secure a place within the new regime. As he becomes increasingly valuable to its bureaucracy, his ambition reveals a deeper motivation, suggesting his loyalty is driven less by ideology than by a desperate attempt to escape the failures of his own life.
The film is a Belgian-French co-production, with Kidam producing in France alongside Michigan Films in Belgium. The wider production network also includes Les Films Pelléas, Les Films de Pierre, Unité, France 2, Condor, The Ink Connection, RTBF, Be tv, Orange and Proximus.
Paris-based sales company Charades secured worldwide distribution rights to the film in April, before its Cannes premiere. Since then, distributors across Europe, Asia and the Middle East have acquired rights following the film’s critical success on the Croisette.
Condor Distribution will release the film in France on September 30, while Cinéart will distribute it in Belgium. Charades has also closed distribution deals with Frenetic Films (Switzerland), Alamode Film (Germany), I Wonder Pictures (Italy), Filmin (Spain), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), One From the Heart (Greece), Cinobo (Greece and Cyprus on SVOD and digital), New Cinema (Israel), Mars Films (Turkey), Mozinet (Hungary), MCF (the Adriatics and Bulgaria), Bio Paradis (Iceland), Hugoeast (China), Falcon (Indonesia) and Zeta Film (Latin America). The North American deal was negotiated by Hélène Espeisse on behalf of the filmmakers through Charades.
Acquisition Supports 1-2 Special’s Festival Strategy
The acquisition aligns with 1-2 Special’s strategy of building a slate around acclaimed festival titles. Founded in early 2025 by former Sideshow co-founding executive Jason Hellerstein, the company launched with the goal of releasing ten independent, primarily festival-sourced films each year. During its first year, it released two titles: Urchin, Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut, and Radu Jude’s Dracula.
The distributor entered 2026 with Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet, winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes 2025, as its first release of the year. It has since released seven titles in 2026, including Kontinental ’25, Miroirs No. 3, Erupcja, Silent Friend, Time and Water, and Rose of Nevada, with three more releases still to come, including A Man of His Time.
The addition of Marre’s latest feature continues the company’s focus on independent films that arrive with significant festival recognition. Previous acquisitions such as Urchin and A Poet also joined the slate after earning major accolades at Cannes, making A Man of His Time a natural fit following its four Cannes awards.
Commenting on the acquisition, Marre said he was “absolutely delighted that the film is being distributed by 1-2 Special.”
“To be part of their carefully curated lineup is a real honor for A Man of His Time. I can’t wait for the film to reach audiences in the U.S. and to see how they respond to it, to this deeply European story, yet one that resonates in so many ways with our contemporary world.”
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