Catherine Breillat to Direct ‘The German Cousin,’ a Small Town Story Inspired by Georges Simenon’s Novel: A Reflection of Today’s World at Cannes Market
EXCLUSIVE: Acclaimed French Filmmaker Catherine Breillat to Adapt Simenon’s Novel
Veteran French director Catherine Breillat, renowned for her latest film Last Summer (2023), which premiered at the Cannes Competition and garnered multiple César and Lumière nominations, is set to write and direct The German Cousin. This upcoming project is an adaptation of Georges Simenon’s novel The Krull House.
Breillat is collaborating again with producer Saïd Ben Saïd of SBS Productions, who also produced Elle and is behind the Cannes 2026 Competition entry The Man I Love. The film is scheduled to begin shooting in late 2027 and will explore themes of small-town groupthink in 1930s Europe. Simenon’s 1939 novel is recognized as a prescient examination of racial hatred and mass hysteria. Pyramide International is managing the film’s sales and is in discussions with potential collaborators at Cannes.
The story is set in a modest grocery café, Chez Krull, located at the city’s edge between industrial outskirts and the countryside. The establishment has been owned for thirty years by a family of German immigrants who have become French citizens. Cornelius Krull, the family patriarch, speaks only a dialect of German and rarely communicates beyond a couple of words, hinting at deep-seated secrets within the family.
As tensions rise on the eve of World War II, local residents opt to shop in town rather than "feed the Krauts." The grocery survives primarily due to passing bargemen and drifters from the outskirts. Maria, the family’s steadfast matriarch, fiercely manages the café, intent on erasing the family’s origins. Meanwhile, her eldest son Joseph is pursuing a medical degree, and her youngest daughter Liesbeth dreams of concert performances abroad. Anna, another daughter, balances her household duties while listening to popular music of the time.
The family’s precarious balance is shattered by the arrival of Hans, a flamboyant German cousin looking to "perfect his French." His charm captivates Liesbeth but irritates the others, revealing his manipulative nature. When a young woman’s body is discovered in the lock, the Krull family is quickly ensnared in suspicions and allegations, culminating in escalating hostility from their community.
Breillat expressed her thoughts on the novel, stating, “I find in Simenon’s novel a singular modernity, a resonance with our own era. However, in order to preserve its universality and subtlety, it seems essential to me not to transpose it crudely into the present day, but rather to retain its dimension as a parable.”
The filmmaker elaborated further, emphasizing that the novel extends beyond a mere family drama. She drew parallels to Proust, who claimed that attention to detail matters greatly, noting that she often lacks resources but never details. Breillat explained, “I have always lacked resources, never details. I am often my own prop master. In this respect, Simenon’s novel is material of remarkable richness, full of subtleties.”
Addressing the deeper implications of her adaptation, she remarked, “Beneath the guise of a muted family chronicle, the story shifts, through the eruption of a horrific crime, toward something far more terrifying: the dissolution of the individual into the crowd. The phenomenon of lynching has always fascinated and terrified me… To me, this novel is a parable — both distant and incisive — of our own era: that of a society driven by a thirst for collective and summary justice.”
