Netflix has a new French film in production, and it is built around one of the most remarkable real-life stories of the postwar era. Projet K, a working title, stars Diane Kruger and Dany Boon as Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, the real-life husband-and-wife team who spent decades hunting down Nazi war criminals after the end of World War II. Tim Roth plays Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyon, known as the Butcher of Lyon, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jewish people. Cameras are already rolling on the film.
Projet K tells the story of Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, a German woman and a French Jewish man whose relationship and shared commitment to justice led them to pursue Barbie for more than a decade. Barbie had fled to Bolivia after the war, living under a false identity for years before the Klarsfelds tracked him down.
Their pursuit, which combined personal grief, political courage and relentless investigation, eventually led to Barbie’s extradition to France in 1983, where he was tried for crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1991. The Klarsfelds’ story is one of the most extraordinary acts of personal accountability in postwar European history, and it has never received a major cinematic treatment until now.
Projet K is directed by Yvan Attal, the French-Israeli filmmaker known for The Accusation and Breaking Point. Attal co-wrote the screenplay with Laurent Turner, who is known for his work on the French Netflix crime series Ganglands. Attal is also producing the film through his production company Films Sous Influence, alongside Antoine Pezet and Jérôme Corcos of NAC Films.
Diane Kruger comes to the role fresh from her starring turn in Fatih Akin’s postwar drama Amrum, which premiered at Cannes, and roles in Paramount+’s Little Disasters and HBO Max’s The Seduction. Her casting as Beate Klarsfeld, a German woman who chose to dedicate her life to hunting the perpetrators of the Holocaust, carries a personal resonance that goes beyond performance.
Kruger previously appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, set in Nazi-occupied France. Projet K marks a return to that historical period in a very different register.
Dany Boon, best known internationally for writing, directing and starring in the 2008 French box office phenomenon Welcome to the Sticks, most recently appeared in Emmanuel Poulain-Arnaud’s dramedy Regarde in French theatres.
As Serge Klarsfeld, a French Jewish man whose own father was deported and killed by the Nazis, he brings a very different kind of emotional weight to the story.
Tim Roth, who plays Klaus Barbie, was most recently seen opposite Cillian Murphy in Tom Harper’s Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man feature for Netflix. His casting as one of the most reviled figures in postwar European history is a significant and intriguing choice, with a performer known for playing morally complex characters stepping into a role with no moral ambiguity at all.
Cameras are now rolling on the film, which is shooting across multiple countries: Paris and Lyon in France, Belgium and Bolivia. The Bolivian location is particularly significant. It was in Bolivia that Barbie lived under the assumed identity of Klaus Altmann for decades, working as a businessman before being identified and eventually extradited. Filming across the actual geography of the Klarsfelds’ pursuit gives the production an immediate sense of historical authenticity.
Projet K joins a strong Netflix French film slate that includes Call My Agent: The Movie, arriving in September, as well as Quasimodo and sequels to Under Paris and Ad Vitam. The streamer has been building its French-language film output steadily over the past several years, and Projet K, with its international cast, historical scale and genuine emotional stakes, is clearly positioned as one of its most ambitious French productions yet.
No release date has been confirmed for Projet K at this stage. The film is currently in production.
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