In the director’s reckoning with his great-grandfather’s choices, Henri Marre arrives in Vichy France in 1940 – penniless, estranged from his family, and convinced he deserves a place in the new government. In his manifesto “A Man of His Time”, Marre declares that a defeated France may yet be redeemed through the efficacy. Without scruple, he manoeuvres the collaborationist system, but beneath his ambition lies a more intimate flight from his own defeat.

