Script Files
Summer of 1914
Spring 1913.
After two years of military service, Louis Besson returns to his family and to his fiancée Adèle, who has changed profoundly.
In a Paris overshadowed by the looming threat of war, torn between nationalist fervor and pacifist ideals, the two young lovers are swept up in the turbulent currents of History, leading them into the upheavals of the summer of 1914.
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Louis Gamazo de RouxWriter
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Project Title (Original Language):Cet été-là: 14
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Project Type:Screenplay
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Number of Pages:90
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Language:French
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First-time Screenwriter:No
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Student Project:No
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Digital Cinema Package:Unavailable
I have worked in the film industry for nearly twenty years, on both major international productions — as an assistant to Alec Baldwin and Joel Edgerton, and as a runner on films directed by Ridley Scott, James Mangold, and David Nutter (Game of Thrones, Season 5) — as well as on independent projects in Spain and Canada.
This hands-on experience, from set work to post-production, led me to recognize the central role of screenwriting as the backbone of any film. After training in editing and motion graphics, I worked as an assistant editor on the documentary Soleils Noirs (dir. Julien Élie), produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
Now based in France, I am developing projects driven by intimate, tense, and character-centered narratives, influenced by filmmakers such as Nicolas Winding Refn, Ruben Östlund, and Asghar Farhadi.
More than 21 million soldiers were wounded during the First World War.
More than 9.7 million died between 1914 and 1918.
Among them, 1.4 million were French. Louis Besson, the hero of this screenplay, was one of them.
As a child, without fully realizing it, I “played at war” with the pierced helmet of this little-known relative. The First World War was rarely spoken of in my family.
The letters Louis left behind were discovered years later in a family desk drawer. They bear witness to the forty days between the assassination of Jean Jaurès on July 31, 1914, and the Battle of the Marne in early September. In one single week, nearly half a million men were killed, wounded, or reported missing. Louis Besson was among them.
With this screenplay, I wanted to imagine the life he might have lived before the war, and the hopes he held for a future that never came to pass—neither for him nor for thousands of men of his generation.
Could this catastrophe have been avoided? I believe the answer is yes. Sometimes very little is needed for a country to slide into horror.
I conclude with a line from Alexander Lernet-Holenia, written from the opposing side, yet strikingly lucid:
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that very soon we will probably have to answer to our troops, and not the other way around.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes. We will have to answer for what we have done.”
“What we have done? We have only done our duty.”
“Precisely (…) Precisely because of that.”
