The first film produced by the amusement park, which will be released in theaters on January 25, 2023, has prompted several articles from the newspaper Liberation, which speaks of a “reactionary and biased” film. Nicolas de Villiers speaks of a “displaced” attack.
The Festival of Lights 2022 in Lyon
It’s a first film that makes people talk. “Vaincre ou Die”, produced by Nicolas de Villiers and filmed on the Puy du Fou site, made the front page of the newspaper Liberation, the day before its release.
This film traces the story of Charette, a royalist general who took part in the Vendée war and who led peasant troops against the Republican armed forces after the French Revolution.
The newspaper, accustomed to puns, renamed Le Puy du Fou to “Puy du Fourbe”, underlining a rewriting of history and the French Revolution, “on the same reactionary and biased model that makes the company successful.”
On Saturday January 21, 2023, it was L’Humanité, another newspaper oriented politically on the left, which called on four historians, who “question the instrumentalization of the past” by the Vendée company.
Articles that Nicolas de Villiers got wind of: “Success attracts jealousy. Puy du Fou has millions of visitors every year. But I thank Liberation, it’s great publicity for the film”answers the president of Puy du Fou France.
When we ask the son of Philippe de Villiers, political figure of the sovereignist right, if he considers that his film is politically oriented, he answers that “Obviously this film is not political. It is not political because we are in 2023 and today it is impossible to believe in the return of a political regime.”
But if this film annoys some journalists, it also raises questions in the political sphere, in particular at the regional council of Pays de la Loire.
It seems peculiar to me that local Republican communities subsidize a film that is inherently anti-Republican.
Franck Nicolon, regional councilor for Loire-Atlantique (Ecology together)
The regional adviser considers all the more that ideological issues were hidden behind this subsidy of 200 000 € : “Generally, a film must pass in front of a technical committee, made up of professionals from the cinema industry, before receiving the subsidy. But this time the majority made it clear to us that the opinion of the committee did not matter”, he adds.
Nicolas de Villiers does not consider the film he produced as an anti-republican film: “For me the message of the film is that every war has its dramas and that in this drama, people like Charette choose heroism and light.”
“This story dates back 230 years, France and the French must assume their history and be proud of our historical figures”, adds the president of Puy du Fou.
Nicolas de Villiers does not intend to stop with this film, and wishes to draw inspiration from his shows and the recent stories of historical men and women from other eras to create new works in the future.