The Stranger | François Ozon

[BluBonnet]

Gaumont boards François Ozon’s feature adaptation of Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’ starring Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder and Swann Arlaud

rench powerhouse studio Gaumont has taken on international sales rights to prolific French filmmaker François Ozon’s adaptation of Albert Camus’ literary masterpiece The Stranger.

Ozon reteams with his Summer Of ’85 breakout star Benjamin Voisin who plays main character Meursault, a Frenchman living in 1930s Algeria whose apathy and indifference to the surrounding world culminate in cold-blooded murder and a trial that explores both the crime and his character.

The Swimming Pool, Under The Sand and 8 Women director also reteams with Rebecca Marder, who starred in Ozon’s 2023 courtroom comedy The Crime Is Mine, and Pierre Lottin, who starred in his 2024 San Sebastian prize-winner When Fall Is Coming.

Anatomy Of A Fall’s Swann Arlaud and Holy Motors’ Denis Lavant round out the starry French cast. The French-language film is produced by Ozon’s production house FOZ and is currently shooting in Morocco with expected delivery in 2026.

Published in 1942, The Stranger is Camus’ first novel and is one of the most popular books in French literature. It has been translated into some 75 languages and explores themes including human cruelty, existentialism and post-colonialism.

‘‘The themes in the book could hardly be more topical: an emotionally absent hero detached from the world, confronting our mortality, the individual’s quest for meaning in an increasingly alienating world,” Ozon said of his desire to adapt Camus’ heady tome.

The directed added: “Adapting the story for the screen struck me as a great way to echo the existential and social questions raised by Camus while engaging contemporary audiences.”

The genre-hopping auteur said he plans to put his own twist on Camus’ celebrated story for what will be his 24th feature.

“It will be necessary to tend stylistically towards a form of abstraction, strangeness and distancing, focusing on details, inserts, gazes and closeups of objects, so that we may better grasp Meursault’s perception of the world,” he said. “We will work with colour as if it were black and white, employing striking, expressionistic contrasts to lend a timeless, classic dimension to the film.”

Gaumont’s EVP of international distribution and co-productions Alexis Cassanet said of the project: “Gaumont, a cornerstone of cinema for over 130 years, is supporting this exceptional encounter between Albert Camus – an iconic figure of world literature – and François Ozon, one of the most prolific and internationally acclaimed French filmmakers of our time. This adaptation is bound to be a French major cinematic event in 2026.”

Gaumont will be launching the film at the upcoming Cannes Marche. It heads to the market with a robust slate that also includes Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard Of The Kremlin starring Paul Dano and Jude Law, about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power; High In the Clouds, an animated feature co-produced by Paul McCartney; and Yann Gozlan’s psychological thriller Dalloway which will play as a Midnight Screening.

[BluBonnet]

[Cremildo]

'The Stranger': exclusive first trailer for Francois Ozon's Venice premiere - YouTube

[BluBonnet]

Francois Ozon on Adapting Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’: ‘I Wanted to Make It With Today’s Perspective of French Algeria and Colonization

When Francois Ozon embarked on the daunting big-screen adaptation of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” — considered one of France’s literary jewels for the last 80 years — he wanted to give it a contemporary resonance. And not by setting in present times, but rather by contextualizing the story, which unfolds in the early 1940s and depicts life in Algeria, then under French colonial rule.

Benjamin Voisin stars as the novel’s antihero, Meursault, who lives a modest, mindless life in Algiers and ends up in prison after shooting a young Arab man five times. On trial for the crime, Meursault’s unusually detached psyche is dissected by the prosecutor. Instead of being judged for the killing of an Arab man, Meursault is ultimately blamed for showing little emotion at the recent funerals for his late mother and hastily starting a relationship with Marie Cardona (Rebecca Marder). The lushly lensed, black-and-white film marks Ozon’s followup to the thriller “When Fall Is Coming.”

Speaking to Variety ahead of the premiere of “The Stranger” in competition at Venice, Ozon said that what interested him was to not to make a film from the perspective of the 1940s, “but make it with today’s perspective, with the distance we have from this period of French Algeria, and of the colonization, and contextualizing the book a little in the era in which it was written.”

[Cremildo]

Variety: "a Sharply Cinematic Enigma"

Screen International: "artful character study"

[SleazyForWeasley]

Looks incredible!