Film. “Saint-Ex”
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Pablo Agüero
Director Pablo Agüero focuses on a slice of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s life: the search for his friend Henri Guillaumet, who disappeared in the Andes in 1930.
When courage and friendship top the bill! For his seventh feature film, and his first in French, Argentinian director Pablo Agüero takes a look back at a period in the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (played by Louis Garrel) and at Aéropostale: the search for pilot Henri Guillaumet (played by Vincent Cassel), who survived for seven days in the Andes following a crash landing.
It is June 1930 in Santiago de Chile. Henri Guillaumet takes to the skies over the Andes at the controls of his Potez 25. But the flight does not exactly go as planned. Caught in a blizzard, he has to make a forced landing at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters on the banks of Laguna del Diamante Lake (in Argentina), a region where the chances of survival are extremely slim at that time of year. News of Guillaumet’s disappearance soon makes its way back to his best friend: Saint-Ex. He quickly abandons the Bahia Blanca-Rio Gallegos route (which he is operating on behalf of Aéropostale) and sets off in search of Guillaumet. For five days, the future author of the “Little Prince” covers the length and breadth of the Andes, only to return unsuccessful every evening, much to the despair of Noëlle (played by Diane Kruger), Guillaumet’s wife—Saint-Ex had been best man at their wedding. All hope of finding Henri Guillaumet in the vast Andean expanse seems lost! That is until the seventh day of his disappearance, when the impossible happens… Speaking about this miracle and his quest, Guillaumet said to Saint-Ex: “What I have done, I swear to you, no animal would have done.” and Saint-Ex would go on to dedicate the collection “Wind, Sand and Stars” to Guillaumet a decade later.
Although this tremendous saga had already been adapted for the big screen with the featurette film “Wings of Courage” (directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, released in 1996 and shown at the Futuroscope in Poitiers), it had never been honored with a “classic” cinema release in feature film format. Until now…
Film. “Saint-Ex”. Released December 11, 2024. Directed by: Pablo Agüero. Starring Louis Garrel, Diane Kruger and Vincent Cassel.
