Marie Curie

Founded in 2013, Big World Pictures is a non-profit distribution outfit dedicated to bringing the best in world cinema to film enthusiasts across the United States. Previous releases include films by Radu Jude, Tamer El Said, Maya Vitkova, Jean-Gabriel Périot, Julia Murat, Tsai Ming-liang and Eric Rohmer. Vinegar Syndrome’s sister company, OCN Distribution, is thrilled to be representing this diverse and unique home video line!

The most turbulent five years in the life of a genius woman: Between 1905, where Marie Curie comes with Pierre Curie to Stockholm to be awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the radioactivity and 1911, where she receives her second Nobel Prize.

1906, Pierre Curie is run over by a horse-drawn carriage and tragically dies on a Parisian street. Marie’s unique marriage and happiest lifetime is destroyed in one go. Left alone with two young daughters, the widow has responsibilities that would overwhelm the strongest man but she faces her duties with greatest courage as a mother and a scientist. Despite her sorrow, she continues the work that she began with Pierre, taking especially the “Curie-therapy” they developed against cancer to great heights. But science is primarily a man’s world and Marie’s audacity is not well seen by everybody. As she embarks on a passionate affair with the mathematician Paul Langevin, she provokes a huge scandal and the tabloids drag her name through the mud. Alarmed by all the malevolent headlines, the Swedish Nobel Academy, who wanted to award her a second Nobel Prize (making her the first person ever to receive two), forbids her to drive to Stockholm to fetch her award. Doesn’t a woman in love earn recognition for her work?

Years later Marie founds the Curie Institute that changed the face of cancer treatment and is today the most successful research center in France. The fate of the Curie and Langevin families remained in the future intertwined: two generations later the granddaughter of Marie, Hélène Curie, and the grandson of Paul, Michel Langevin, both scientists, will fall in love and marry. Today Pierre, Marie and Paul rest in peace next to each other at the Panthéon in Paris.

Director: Marie Noëlle
Country: Germany/France/Poland
Year: 2016
Running time: 95 min
In French with English subtitles