French disaster epic Notre-Dame on Fire hits Chinese big screen

This April marks the fourth anniversary of Notre-Dame in Paris being engulfed by the biggest blaze in its history.

Notre-Dame on Fire, now in Chinese cinemas, is a disaster epic by veteran French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud, who also helmed Wolf Totem (2015), a drama film adapted from Chinese writer Jiang Rong’s eponymous novel.

The film made its China premiere on April 6 in Beijing in the presence of France’s Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak and the director.

Presenting a blow-by-blow recreation of the gripping events that happened on April 15, 2019 when the fire at the French medieval catholic cathedral rocked France and shocked the whole world, Annaud’s new film hails the heroic people who put their lives on the line to accomplish the awe-inspiring rescue.

Annaud unveiled the filming details of the film to the audience attending the China premiere.

“It was a dangerous movie. The actors were actually very close to the extremely violent fire, 1,200-degree Fahrenheit fire. There are very few digital special effects. Almost all of what you have seen are identically reconstructed sets that I set on fire,” he said.

“For most scenes, I only had one minute and 10 seconds because the studio was starved of oxygen and everyone had to run away as soon as possible,” he added.

Annaud decided to make a film about the fire in April 2020. “Obviously, I immediately felt the extraordinary cinematographic merits. Beyond the disaster and the grief, of course, there is precisely the emotion and the spectacle of the fire,” he explained his choice in a 2021 interview with France TV Info.

The film was released in France on March 16, 2022.

“When I saw this movie in Paris last year, it took me a few hours before I could breathe and walk normally on the street,” said Malak at the film’s China premiere.

The French minister announced that 2024 will be the France-China Year of Culture and Tourism and she invited Chinese tourists to travel to France for the occasion, especially to see the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, which, after almost six years of extensive renovations, is scheduled to reopen to the public in December of the same year.