‘Jupiter’ Venice Review: A French Take on the World War III Thriller

The prospect of a Third World War has been a staple of cinema ever since, well, the Second one ended. Dozens of films, in all kinds of tones and styles, have imagined scenarios in which the fate of the planet rests in the hands of presidents, generals, experts and officials of every stripe. They’ve ranged from satire—like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove—to the urgent intensity of Kathryn Bigelow’s recent A House of Dynamite. But they all share the same underlying idea: if such a war were ever to happen, it wouldn’t be just another conflict. It would be the one that ends them all. And everyone with it.

What sets Jupiter apart is that, unlike most films of its kind, it focuses on the French government. They’re at the center of the action here. Structured almost like a stage play, the film follows France’s top political leaders as they’re forced to make a series of urgent decisions when the international situation spirals toward catastrophe. The burden of intervention falls squarely on their shoulders.

Everything begins with an emergency call summoning France’s newly elected president, Paul Archambault (Denis Ménochet), to meet with his ministers and military advisers in Jupiter, the bunker beneath the Élysée Palace, the seat of the French government. At first, Paul —who’s dealing with personal and family troubles— seems more concerned with finding out where his wife is. But once he’s briefed on recent events, his demeanor changes completely. All signs point to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine reaching its most dangerous point yet.

While the names have been changed, it’s obvious that the countries involved —and the territorial and political dispute between them— closely resemble the real ones. The difference here is that the Russians release a video showing their president as the victim of an assassination attempt allegedly carried out by Ukrainian agents, one that nearly killed him. Whether the footage is genuine, staged, a deepfake or AI-generated is impossible to tell. What matters is that the Russian president responds by declaring he’s prepared to launch a nuclear strike against Ukraine.

That French war cabinet—which includes ministers and advisers played by André Dussollier, Ella Rumpf, Reda Kateb, Dominique Blanc, Céline Sallette, Cédric Kahn and Jérémy Lopez—quickly splits into two camps: the hawks and the negotiators. Their first move is a virtual meeting with the leaders of NATO’s major powers—Germany, Italy, the United States, Britain and others—and from that summit comes the decision that Archambault himself should negotiate directly with his Russian counterpart. The conversation is anything but cordial, provocations escalate by the minute, and the French president finds himself facing the uncomfortable choice of either raising the stakes or trying to ease tensions before it’s too late.

Jupiter doesn’t reinvent the genre or introduce any particularly new ideas, but its lean, direct and tightly wound storytelling—it runs just 88 minutes—creates an impressive sense of anxiety and steadily mounting tension. Is it wiser to de-escalate, negotiate, maybe even offer the increasingly unstable Russian president some kind of concession to calm him down? Or should aggression be met with aggression? Or is there a third option altogether? Some clever maneuver that keeps this geopolitical game of chicken believable, where everyone threatens but no one truly wants to make the first irreversible move?

Beyond the novelty of putting French leaders in the spotlight instead of the American officials who usually dominate these stories, Jupiter embraces the now-classic template of the escalating geopolitical thriller. It’s a tightly contained, almost claustrophobic film in which a handful of people may end up deciding the fate of the entire world. As Europe’s leading nuclear power, France is presented as the continent’s first line of defense against any Russian attack. And the responsibility falls on the shoulders of an inexperienced, emotionally shaken president who’s far from certain he knows the right course of action.

Compared to most of today’s world leaders, you could argue that Archambault —even with his stubborn streak and his questionable decisions— comes across as a relatively sensible, rational man. For all his flaws, and despite his tendency to listen more closely to his hawkish advisers than to the voices urging restraint, he seems to understand the weight of every decision he makes. If this same crisis were to unfold in the real world, given the caliber of world leaders we have in 2026, Jupiter would probably play like an absurd comedy. An extremely dark one, but a comedy nonetheless.