EXCLUSIVE: Menemsha Films has picked up distribution rights in the United States for When The Night Falls (La Troisième Nuit), the Second World War drama directed by and starring Daniel Auteuil that world premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May.
The film is based on the true story of Jewish-born Catholic priest Father Alexandre Glasberg and a young civil servant who risked their lives to save children from deportation during the Nazi occupation.
Screen’s review described the film, that played in the Cannes Premiere section of the festival, as “a robust moral thriller, both intellectually chewy and emotionally finely-calibrated.”
Auteuil co-wrote the script with Camille Lugan. It is the veteran actor’s sixth feature as a director and premiered in the Cannes Premiere section of this year’s festival after his previous film An Ordinary Case world premiered as a special screening there in 2024.
Antoine Reinartz, Gregory Gadebois and Luana Bajrami co-star in the film set in 1942 that was shot in Lyon and is produced by Frederic Jouve for Les Films Velvet, the production outfit behind Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life. Co-producers are Palatio Films and La Smala Productions. SND will release the film in France on January 20, 2027.
The deal was negotiated between Menemsha Films president Neil Friedman and SND’s head of sales Ramy Nahas.
Menemsha plans to send When The Night Falls onto the film festival circuit before a theatrical release in the Spring of 2027.
Friedmann said the company “greatly admires the work of Daniel Auteuil as film director and lead actor.” He added: “Given that Menemsha recently had great success with Daniel Auteuil in a starring role in the film Farewell Mr. Haffmann, we are over the moon to commence work on the distribution of When Night Falls in the United States.” Farewell Mr. Haffman, directed by Fred Cavayé and co-starring Gilles Lellouche and Sara Girardeau, follows a jeweller and his employee embroiled in a complicated power dynamic in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941.
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