When Alexandre Smia began writing “Jupiter,” his gripping feature directing debut about a newly elected French president confronted with the possibility of nuclear war with Russia, Joe Biden was still in the White House.
A year and a half later, as the film prepares to world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, the geopolitical landscape around it has moved with unsettling speed, making “Jupiter” feel more timely than Smia ever imagined.
Produced by Hugo Sélignac and Nicolas Dumont’s Chi Fou Mi Productions, one of France’s leading production outfits part of Mediawan, “Jupiter” stars Denis Ménochet as Paul Archambault, a newly elected French president summoned to the Jupiter command post, the highly secretive anti-atomic bunker beneath the Élysée Palace, after an assassination attempt against the Russian president triggers a rapidly escalating international crisis. Russia blames Ukraine and threatens retaliation, leaving Archambault and his political and military advisers facing an impossible choice as nuclear war looms.
“I don’t think we’re dealing with a dystopian hypothesis at all,” Smia says about his gripping film. “I think we’re dealing with a form of plausible reality. And that’s what’s completely frightening: it’s totally plausible.”
