Here is the full official trailer for A Magnificent Life, director Sylvain Chomet’s biographical film on French playwright, novelist, and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, brought to life through his signature hand-drawn animation style.
Featuring Laurent Lafitte as Pagnol and Géraldine Pailhas as Augustine Pagnol, the story unfolds around an aging artist confronting his legacy and fading memories. Chomet revisits the medium with this reflective exploration of creativity, memory, and identity.
A Magnificent Life premiered in the Special Screenings section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, followed by an appearance at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The film is set to arrive in theaters nationwide on March 27, 2026, via Sony Pictures Classics
In 1955, 60-year-old Marcel Pagnol is a well-known and acclaimed playwright, novelist, and filmmaker whose memory is beginning to fail him. While struggling with disappointment over the results of his recent plays and feeling his artistic relevance slipping, he is commissioned by the editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine to write a weekly column about his childhood. As he revisits the past, his younger self appears to guide him through moments of triumph, love, and creative breakthrough.
Director Sylvain Chomet shared in an interview that the project evolved from an idea originally pitched as a documentary to a full animated biopic, saying, “But then I was contacted by the grandson of Marcel Pagnol [Nicolas]. It was supposed to be a normal documentary… and it’s basically an animated biopic — and I think one of the first. From the meeting with Nicolas Pagnol, it took eight years to make the movie. That’s very long. Most of that being how we wanted to do the project — doing the documentary first and then going back to do something different, and also raising the fundings, which was very complicated. Happily, we found a great producer, who has also become my friend, Aton Soumache. When he saw the Pilot we did he said, “Okay, let’s go for it.” The making was basically three years.”
In a review from RogerEbert.com, critic Brian Tallerico wrote, “Much like Linklater, Chomet is careful to avoid overt melodrama. He’s made a film that’s reverential of a smart, artistic man, but doesn’t place him on too high a pedestal for us to see him. And, of course, he tells this story through the lyrical animation that made him a giant in his industry.”
Watch the official trailer for A Magnificent Life above.
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