Walking to Paris

Walking to Paris is an upcoming biographical drama film directed and written by Peter Greenaway. It is devoted to an 18-month journey through Europe, by Constantin Brâncuși, at the beginning of the 20th century. The film is not a documentary, nor really a biographical film, but a fiction imagined by the British director from a real fact of which hardly any details are known.

Walking to Paris
Directed by	Peter Greenaway
Written by	Peter Greenaway
Produced by	Andrea De Liberato Kees Kasander Emanuele Moretti
Starring	Emun Elliott Paolo Bernardini Andrea Scarduzio Jacopo Uccella Carla Juri Manuela Biedermann
Cinematography	Paolo Carnera Fabio Paolucci Reinier van Brummelen
Edited by	Elmer Leupen
Music by	Marco Robino
Production company	Motus Studios
Release date	12 November 2023 (2023-11-12) (IDFA) (work-in-progress)[1]
Countries	Italy France Switzerland
Language	English

Synopsis

The film is devoted to the journey of a young 26/27-year-old artist destined to become famous, Constantin Brâncuși, traveling through Europe. He leaves from Romania where he was born and where he began to study fine arts, to Paris where he wishes to deepen this training. This journey is a real fact, made on foot over 2500 kilometers, across Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. It lasted 18 months. However, the details of this adventure remained unknown. Peter Greenaway has built a cinematic fiction from this trip, and imagines comic or violent adventures, sometimes sexual and sometimes romantic. The peregrination thus reconstituted is also marked out by the construction of sculptures with the materials found along the way.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

Cast

• Emun Elliott as Constantin Brâncuși
• Paolo Bernardini as Constantin Brâncuși
• Andrea Scarduzio as Constantin Brâncuși
• Jacopo Uccella as Constantin Brâncuși
• Carla Juri as Lucy
• Remo Girone as son of Brâncuși
• Marcello Mazzarella as Auguste Rodin
• Anthony Souter as Jonathan Art Historian
• Manuela Biedermann as Vittoria

Production

Filming

The winter sequences were shot in Switzerland in 2015, and the summer scenes in 2016 and 2017, in Switzerland and Italy.^[3][5] Filming was completed in 2019 and the film has been in post-production ever since.^[7]

Post-production

In December 2022, Greenaway stated that post-production on the film had still not been completed; that it was "languishing in a laboratory in Rome",^[7] and that he had moved on from the project, saying:

It got chewed up and regorged and reconsidered by a whole group of producers who are still arguing about finishing it. We still have to dub it, we still have to create it, etc. As far as my creativity on the film is concerned, it's completely finished now and has been for about two years, but it's very difficult to wrestle this wretched phenomenon out of the hands of warring producers. There is some talk about it maybe being ready for the Berlin Film Festival [in February 2023], but we're onto other things because I can't hang about waiting for these producers to make their minds up.

Music

The original soundtrack is by Marco Robino, Marco Gentile, and the Turin Architorti string quintet, picking up a collaboration already provided with the director (Rembrandt's J'accuse, Goltzius and the Pelican Company^[5]).

Release

The first trailer for the film was released on 3 March 2022, alongside an announcement of a November 2022 release date,^[8] which did not come to pass. A work-in-progress cut was screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam on 12 November 2023,^[1] but distribution remained uncertain due to unresolved rights issues.^[9] As of March 2025 the film has yet to be commercially released.