“Le Faux Soir,” a Belgian-French WWII resistance drama from “Bullhead” director Michaël R. Roskam, has been set as the closing night film of this year’s San Sebastián Film Festival.
Playing in the festival’s Official Selection out of competition, the film will have its European premiere at San Sebastián after world premiering at Toronto, where it screens in Special Presentations. It will close the festival after the awards ceremony on Sept. 26 at the Kursaal.
“Le Faux Soir” is produced by Belgium’s Frakas Productions and Roskam’s Harbor Men Pictures with France’s Rectangle Productions. Goodfellas handles international sales, while Cinéart will release the film in Benelux.
Set in Nazi-occupied Belgium in 1943, the film follows a group of Resistance fighters after the occupying forces turn national daily Le Soir into a propaganda outlet.
With commemorations of the 1918 Armistice banned, they hatch a plan to produce a fake edition of the newspaper, reproducing its paper, nameplate and format but filling its pages with articles mocking the German occupiers. The operation has been described as “the world’s first media hack.”
