Drama Film "Impossible" Premieres on Arte Starring Swann Arlaud

The television film "Impossible," directed by Emmanuel Finkiel and starring Swann Arlaud alongside Italian actor Fabrizio Bentivoglio, premieres on Arte. The feature adapts the novel of the same name by Italian writer Erri De Luca, which was published by Gallimard in 2020.

The story follows an elderly mountaineer named Enzo Tovoli, played by Bentivoglio, who is placed in police custody and interrogated by Judge Dorieu, portrayed by Arlaud. While hiking in the Dévoluy massif in the French Alps, Enzo witnesses a fellow hiker make a fatal fall. The magistrate suspects the older man of causing the death of the victim, an activist named Armando, with whom Enzo shared a revolutionary political past decades earlier.

Despite the realistic alpine settings filmed in the Hautes-Alpes, Nice, and Troyes, the criminal case is entirely fictional. However, the narrative draws clear inspiration from the background of author Erri De Luca, who was a militant in the far-left Italian movement Lotta Continua during the 1960s and 1970s and is a passionate mountaineer.

The production received recognition at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival, where the jury awarded it the Stéphane-Strano prize for best screenplay and the award for best television drama unitaire. The project was noted for its intense verbal exchanges, consisting primarily of five lengthy interviews between the two main characters.

Reflecting on the shooting process, Swann Arlaud noted that the scenes required rigorous memorization of the script. "The only way to take pleasure and be just and efficient was to no longer question the text at all," Arlaud stated regarding the surgical and technical precision needed for the performance.

The psychological tension in the film stems from the clash between an uncompromising man of law seeking procedural truth and a free-spirited individual bound by his personal code. As the interviews progress, a mutual respect develops between the two men, highlighting themes of justice, generational differences, and the burden of political idealism.