Wes Anderson wrote, directed, and produced The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, a 2021 American comedy-drama film based on a story he co-wrote with Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, and Jason Schwartzman.
Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson star in the film, which has an ensemble cast. As the French international office of a fictional Kansas newspaper prepares its farewell issue, the drama follows three different storylines.
The film, which centres on three stories, has been described as a love letter to journalists set at an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional 20th-century French city. It is based on a collection of stories written in the imaginary French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé and published in the titular The French Dispatch. It is said that Anderson’s love of The New Yorker inspired the film, and some of the people and events are based on real-life counterparts from the magazine.
One of the three stories is based on Mavis Gallant’s two-part article “The Events in May: A Paris Notebook,” which was inspired by the student occupation movements of May 1968. The last story, starring Adrien Brody’s Julien Cadazio, is based on The New Yorker’s six-part piece on art dealer Lord Duveen, “The Days of Duveen.”
The French Dispatch had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on July 12, 2021, after a delay. On October 22, 2021, Searchlight Pictures will distribute it in theatres across the United States.
The French Dispatch filming locations
To film this delectable movie, the crew travelled to Angoulême, a small and isolated town in western France that isn’t surprising for a graphic-arts aficionado like Anderson. The town, also known as “La Ville de l’Image,” is a national centre for animation and video games, having around 30 studios in the area. It also has a nice selection of winding streets with the feel of a classic Nouvelle Vague neighbourhood.
Angoulême is in southwest France, around two hours north of Bordeaux and 40 minutes east of Cognac. Because of its elevated plateau overlooking the Charente valley, Angoulême is known as the “balcony of the south-west.” It is also known for its annual comic strip festival, the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée, which attracts a quarter of a million tourists in late January.
Angoulême, France
Anderson told local newspaper Charente Libre in a rare interview that the location scouts looked hard for a village that might be a Parisian quartier like Ménilmontant, Belleville, or Montmartre. The architecture in Angoulême is stunning. The Old Town, with its stairwells, bridge, and many levels, has been well conserved. It’s also very calm here, which is excellent for filming.
Anderson spent six months on location, hiring 900 people as extras and crew from the area. The interiors team was situated at the decommissioned Cofpa felt factory in adjacent Gond-Pontouvre, but they also filmed throughout the city. On rue du Sauvage, riot police lined up on an overhead bridge for filming.
There were other changes made as well such as the Rue de Bélat was changed into an old-school newspaper kiosk and the square in front of Cathédrale Saint-Pierre was transformed into the home of The French Dispatch office using fake façades and scaffolding. Anderson told Charente Libre that all they needed was a prison to house Benicio Del Toro’s Moses Rosenthaler, which they located in nearby Ruelle.
The cast made Hôtel Le Saint Gelais, on rue du Père Deval in the heart of the city, their home while in town. While Anderson praised the Hôtel de Bardines, a pillared palace on rue de Beaulieu, it appears that Bill Murray was the town’s largest supporter. He only had to come once, but he insisted on coming again and he also remained a week the second time for a single day of shooting.