You might say Emmanuel Courcol has taken the baton with his new film The Marching Band. After Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and the Cate Blanchett-starring Tár, the French writer-director is following suit with another film about a classical conductor. Just don’t point that out to him. ‘I don’t want to be part of a fashion trend,’ he sighs. Courcol’s film is a little different. It tells the story of Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe), an acclaimed conductor who has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. It’s a journey that leads him to discover not only that he was adopted, but that he has a brother Jimmy (Pierre Lottin), a trombone player and factory worker. 

While the siblings become acquainted after Jimmy becomes Thibaut’s donor, it’s clear that life dealt them very different hands. Courcol wanted to explore ‘the injustice of destiny,’ as he puts it. ‘Sometimes the family or the social class you’re born in makes your fate, so that’s the injustice of it. If you’re not born in a favourable condition, it’s very hard to catch up for what you’ve been missing.’

His research included watching Tár, which made him realise just how much he’d need from his actor. Lavernhe went into training, working with real-life conductor Antoine Dutaillis to perfect his baton-waving skills. ‘Benjamin said he wanted to be at least as good as Cate Blanchett. So when they met in Cannes, he told her that and he was quite happy with the results.’ The result is a feelgood film that’s already performed well at the French box office, drawing comparisons to British effort Brassed Off (which was set around a depressed industrial northern town, not unlike the choice of Lille here). Whatever the struggles, Courcol wanted his tune to be ultimately upbeat. ‘I do see a lot of warmth, hospitality and solidarity in the people living in that part of France.’

The Marching Band is in cinemas from Friday 16 May.