A Magnificent Life

A MAGNIFICENT LIFE is the newest animated film from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sylvain Chomet (THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE). It follows the life of Marcel Pagnol, a playwright, novelist, and filmmaker who grew up in a middle-class household in Marseille and became one of the world's most inventive and prolific artists from the 1930s to the 1950s.

In 1955, Marcel Pagnol, over sixty, had just ended a prolific film career to return to his childhood love, the theatre. But when his last two plays are resounding failures, he is begins to doubt the public's interest in his work, and thinks it might be time to make way for the younger generation.

During a friendly dinner, the editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine commissions him to write a weekly literary serial about his childhood, his Provence, his first loves. A few days later, when the ELLE messenger come to ask him for the pages at the beginning of his story, Pagnol rushes to write them, realizing that his childhood memories are starting to escape him.