PARIS — Politics in France has rarely been more divisive, but presidential candidates of various political persuasions have finally found something they agree on: The new movie about Charles de Gaulle is a masterpiece.
“De Gaulle,” a two-part, five-hour-long opus, has become an unexpected summer hit after a slow start at the box office. The film tells the lesser-known tale of the legendary general’s political maneuvering to maintain France’s sovereignty and fend off a domineering American president’s plans for Europe.
“De Gaulle” is a movie for the moment, and not just because the comfort of dark, air-conditioned theaters offers refuge from heat waves scorching France this summer.
The epic tale of a solitary, dogged patriot fighting to save his country from annihilation while standing up to an overbearing ally across the Atlantic captures the zeitgeist of French politics today.
As France again faces questions about the future of its alliance with the United States, French people find themselves forced to choose between various leaders portraying themselves as national saviors ahead of the presidential election next year.
So presidential hopefuls from across the political spectrum, including those from parties that view De Gaulle less favorably, are hailing the film’s portrayal of the wartime general’s brilliance in times of trouble — and, in thinly veiled casting attempts, trying to portray themselves as France’s next providential leader.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu last week said the movie’s success spoke to the French need of “meaning” and “perspectives” in a rare interview with glossy magazine Paris Match.
Perhaps the most surprising endorsement came from anticapitalist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose party France Unbowed opposes conservative movements that have claimed to carry on De Gaulle’s legacy, despite the general himself equally despising all political parties.
During his Bastille Day address in the western city of Paimpont, the left-wing leader, one of the top contenders in next year’s election, strongly encouraged his supporters to watch a “magnificent movie,” drawing parallels between De Gaulle’s uphill battle to build up the country’s free forces during the war and his own campaign.
“I would like us to once again shake up the order of things,” he said right before invoking the movie. “This election is so dangerous that the stakes are incredibly high.”
A political tale
The De Gaulle movie’s originality lies in its focus on political battles rather than military ones, though it does feature a generous dose of epic fights led by rogue French officers.
At the heart of it is the wartime general’s far-fetched political campaign to rally French officials, soldiers, diplomats and ordinary citizens who — initially in rather small numbers — refused to abide by the armistice with Nazi Germany struck by Marshal Philippe Pétain, then head of the French state, and De Gaulle’s parallel quest to secure support from British and American allies.
Sébastien Lecornu leaves after the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Elysée Palace in Paris on July 22, 2026. | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images“De Gaulle belongs to all French people, regardless of their political leanings,” said Eric Branca, an author who has written several books about De Gaulle. “Attempts to co-opt him demonstrate that he has become a mandatory point of reference for anyone who upholds — or wishes to be seen as upholding — a tradition of national and popular defense.”
The wartime leader, who rebelled against the elected government that collaborated with the Nazis, has long been a revered figure in French politics, though more so on the right end of the political spectrum.
Former Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy both headed self-described Gaullist parties, and their most direct political heir, conservative leader Bruno Retailleau, was the first high-profile presidential candidate to publicly praise the “superb” ode to De Gaulle earlier this month.
“Why is this movie so successful?” Retailleau said this month on France 2’s primetime evening news broadcast. “Of course, there’s the director’s talent, there’s the actors’ talent, but there’s something deeper … There’s a need for patriotism, there’s a need to rediscover who we are.”
Just like its main character, whose London-based operations got off to a slow start — the film depicts De Gaulle’s loneliness in his early days in the British capital, where his initial calls for rebellion fell mostly on deaf ears — the De Gaulle movie looked to be on the verge of failure before meeting success.
When the first part came out early June, ticket sales were low, portending a commercial disaster for a movie that cost roughly €75 million to make. Word of mouth helped spur viewership, as did the severe heat waves that hit the country, and as of Friday the film had sold more than 3.5 million tickets, according to CBO box office figures published by French media.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon delivers a speech in Paimpont, France, on July 14, 2026. | Fred Tanneau/AFP via Getty ImagesCenter-left MEP and presidential hopeful Raphaël Glucksmann urged his supporters to go and see the movie when he spoke at a French national day ceremony in the southwestern town of Izon.
“Go and see what makes France great. What freedom is worth, and what it costs: loneliness. The loneliness of the general and his first companions,” he said in what one can’t help but see as a hint at his own struggle to overcome his political camp’s deep internal divisions.
Glucksmann is the moderate left’s best-placed candidate in polls but has yet to unite like-minded partners behind him.
Branca, the author who writes extensively on De Gaulle, said the movie resonated strongly with the country’s current political situation, marked by instability and a deep fragmentation, including because it highlighted the importance of legitimacy in politics. There are currently more than 30 already declared or likely candidates in next year’s election, a number inversely proportional to the French population’s declining trust in their politicians.
“[Collaborationist regime] Vichy was legal,[but] De Gaulle was legitimate,” he said.
That legitimacy was rooted in his refusal to stop fighting and accept the humiliating defeat inflicted by the German army, which swept over the country and brought it to its knees in the Battle of France in the spring of 1940.
Bruno Retailleau is pictured in Paris on July 7, 2026. | Daniel Perron/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty ImagesWhile France isn’t currently at war, the widely held perception that its leaders are either incompetent or incapable of placing public interest above their individual ambitions is fueling voter dissatisfaction and the rise of populist figures like Mélenchon and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
Le Pen hasn’t publicly commented on the film, but prominent figures from her party, the National Rally, have hailed it. MEP Pierre-Romain Thionnet, posting from a movie theater, said on X it was “written with a French heart.”
French-American standoff
The movie also highlights the standoff between De Gaulle, then an isolated undersecretary of state in exile, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who doesn’t share British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s fondness for the French resistance leader. Roosevelt, appalled by France’s military defeat, saw De Gaulle as an obstacle to his own plans to fight the Axis powers and prepare for D-Day.
“From the moment the Americans step into the war, they want to do it in the best possible conditions. Dealing with a France that is … not united makes things difficult for them,” said Guillaume Lasconjarias, a military historian at the Institute for Higher National Defense Studies.
The film shows De Gaulle standing up to Roosevelt, previewing decades of French defiance toward its powerful ally, and sticking to his sovereign France mantra at the risk of jeopardizing military victories and the Allies’ fragile unity.
The strategy carried a lot of short-term pain but also long-term gains for Paris and its allies, with French free forces and the unified resistance proving a key asset in the weeks and months following D-Day. Most importantly for the French, De Gaulle-led France was able to partly erase the political stigma attached to the Vichy regime’s quick capitulation and its work with Nazi Germany.
“He was such a pain in the neck,” said centrist former Economy Minister Eric Lombard, a longtime admirer of De Gaulle. “Honestly, the fact that he managed to cast us as winners and secure us a seat on the [United Nations] Security Council … It is incredible.”