Theater of War

For the first time in history, permission has been granted for an independent filmmaker to enter the elitist military academy that has been training the cream of the French officer corps since it was established by Napoleon in 1802. This is an inside look at the life of the Saint-Cyr cadets, with special emphasis on how the school’s rituals and traditions — some of them quite surprising to the outsider — are handed down from one class to the next, as they have been for almost two hundred years. Here lies the foundation of the school’s famed ‘esprit de corps’. To capture the annual cycle of rituals, director-cameraman Philippe Costantini filmed over the course of an entire year, living at the school for long periods of time. The focus is squarely on the cadets themselves and their feelings about what they are going through.