THIS April marks the fourth anniversary of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris being engulfed by the biggest blaze in its history. French disaster epic “Notre-Dame on Fire,” directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, hit Chinese cinemas Friday. During the director’s trip to Beijing last week, he said Chinese moviegoers will experience suspense and tension from the epic. Presenting a blow-by-blow recreation of the gripping events that happened April 15, 2019 when the fire at the French medieval catholic cathedral 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. The director unveiled the filming details to the audience at the China premiere in Beijing last Thursday, pointing out that compared with other disaster epics, the uniqueness of “Notre-Dame on Fire” lies in its realistic depiction. “The actors were actually very close to the extremely violent fire. There are very few digital special effects. Almost all of what you have seen is identically reconstructed sets that I set on fire,” he said. “For most scenes, I only had one minute because the studio was starved of oxygen and everyone had to run away as soon as possible,” he added. Annaud decided to make this film in April 2020. “Obviously, I immediately felt the potential of a very tense thriller. Beyond the disaster and the grief, of course, there is precisely the emotion behind the fire,” he explained his choice in a 2021 interview with France TV Info. Many Chinese netizens have expressed their high anticipation for the film. “Notre-Dame is a precious world heritage for all humanity. We need to remember the catastrophe. I hope to see its glorious face again,” one netizen commented on Chinese reviewing platform Douban. Annaud mentioned that since the fire, a lot of institutions in charge of monuments around the world have been paying attention to the accident in the hopes of learning some lessons from the painful event. The movie has surprised a lot of Chinese audience members, many of whom described the scenes of the fire in the thriller as “so real.” The director explained that instead of using the same footages that had been seen for months on television, he released a speech on the internet saying that he would be happy if people who have videos of what really happened could send them to him. Almost immediately, he received 6,000 videos of the fire, and after a few months, he had about 35,000 videos from which to get footage. “I had a crew watching it, selecting for me the very best. But what was amusing is that I shot the movie without those images.” At the Beijing premiere, France’s Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak invited Chinese tourists to travel to France to see the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which, after almost six years of extensive renovations, is scheduled to reopen to the public in December 2024. Annaud, 80, has deep ties with China. He directed the Chinese-French coproduction “Wolf Totem” (2015), based on the acclaimed novel by Chinese author Jiang Rong. (China Daily, Global Times) | 