Filmed for French television, the film focuses on the life of French writer, politician and diplomat François-René de Chateaubriand.
The production is filming 25 days in the Czech Republic, plus a few days in Slovakia and France.
The French producers were drawn to the Czech Republic’s well-preserved and diverse locations. In the film, interiors and exteriors in Prague and castles and chateaux in Moravia stand in for Paris and France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Chateaubriand himself remarked on the similarities between Prague and Paris when he visited the Bohemia in 1833. “A boat taking me on board at the Prague Bridge [Charles Bridge] could land me by the Pont-Royal in Paris,” he wrote.
Producer Marc Jenny of Czech production services company OKKO Production helped the French producers find the locations, equipment and crew. All but a handful of the crew are Czech, and all equipment is locally sourced. Roughly half the EUR 3m production is being spent in the Czech Republic.
Chateaubriand was initially a sympathizer of the French Revolution, but later served in the Royalist army. After a period of exile abroad, he returned to France in 1800 and served as a diplomat before falling afoul of Napoleon Bonaparte. He supported the Bourbon Restoration but later refused to swear allegiance to King Louis-Philippe, thus ending his political career. For his literary achievements he is considered the father of French Romanticism.
The film stars Frederic Diefenthal, Armelle Deutsch, Jean Francois Balmer, Annelise Hesme, Jacques Spiesser and Daniel Mesguisch.