The Cinematheque

Vancouver Premiere

“Beautifully crafted and certifiably insane … Dumont reminds us that these billion-dollar Hollywood behemoths can be simplistic and even silly undertakings when you remove the expensive packaging.”

Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

Few—heck, no one—could have foreseen the tonal about-face of Bruno Dumont’s once Bressonian cinema. His Star Wars-spoofing new picture, an unlikely winner of the Silver Bear at Berlin, is perhaps farthest afield from where the French auteur started—yet Dumont has asserted without a trace of sarcasm that his slapstick space opera serves as prequel to his (decidedly unfunny) debut La vie de Jésus! A less contentious connection is to the director’s Quinquin saga, not least because The Empire marks the return of its buffoon detectives. The previous installment, 2018’s Coincoin and the Extra-Humans, witnessed the invasion of body-snatching aliens in the Côte d’Opale, a perennial Dumont locale. Here, the sci-fi goes intergalactic—and the CGI measures up—in a blockbuster-scaled parody about two warring races, Zeros and Ones, converging in northern France over the fate of an evil-incarnate baby. Ludicrous, sure, and probably the most fun you’ll have at the arthouse this year.

In French with English subtitles

“A lunatic piece of sci-fi social realism … The Empire offers a completely unique take—both aesthetically and thematically—on the timeworn alien invasion genre … [An] unabashedly personal cine-UFO.”

David Jenkins, Little White Lies

“A hilarious parody version of the galactic movies which have fuelled audiences’ imaginations to bursting point over the past fifty or so years … Bruno Dumont signs his name to a cult film which also happens to be brilliantly directed.”

Fabien Lemercier, Cineuropa