Winner of the Best Screenplay Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, A Man of His Time traces the footsteps of a man working as a Vichy government bureaucrat in German-occupied France who becomes quietly complicit in the persecution of Jewish people. In September 1940, as the Vichy regime is established in France and defeated by Germany, the penniless 49-year-old Henri Marre (Swann Arlaud) carries a self-published political treatise, Notre Salut, in his bag, viewing the situation not as a crisis but as an opportunity. Based on actual letters left behind by his own great-grandfather, director Emmanuel Marre reveals how systematically one of the 20th century’s worst crimes was organized from within the French administration. Swann Arlaud, who delivered a powerful performance as the defense lawyer in Anatomy of a Fall (2023), delves deeply into the psychology of an ordinary, opportunistic figure whose sole concern is preserving his position and privilege. Far from a typical historical period drama, the film was shot in a hyper-realistic style akin to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2024), stripping away any dramatic embellishment to depict evil with an utterly mundane face. (SEO Seunghee)