The Marching Band (En Fanfare) is a 2024 French drama directed by Emmanuel Courcol, who also co-wrote the screenplay. It premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and was released in the UK yesterday, so I went down to the Pictureville cinema at the National Media Museum in Bradford to take a look.

When internationally renowned orchestra conductor, Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe), is diagnosed with leukaemia, a test to assess the suitability of his sister as a bone-marrow donor reveals that she is not in fact his real sister – he was adopted. Thibaut tracks down a biological brother, Jimmy (Pierre Lottin – who appeared recently in Ozon’s When Autumn Falls), who was also unaware that he had a brother. Jimmy is a cook in a factory canteen, and plays trombone in a local marching band. So, poles apart both socially and culturally, the brothers have one thing in common: music.

Jimmy is tested and his bone-marrow proves a potential match and, when the band find themselves in need of a new conductor, guess who steps up to the plate! All the elements for this to be just another feelgood film, however the tightly written characters of the brothers, together with the excellent performances from the two leads and the deliberately unsentimental direction keep it from falling into that trap.

This is firmly anchored in the genre of family drama. Yes, the music and the structure of the band have certain echoes of Nick Herman’s Brassed Off, but this film is much more focussed on the relationship between the brothers and what they each might have become had they grown up in the other’s place, or perhaps even together in one family.  

The Marching Band is a little melodramatic in places, but is well-directed and the excellent performances from the two leads keep it very watchable. And whilst the film holds back on sentimentality until almost the end, the final scene is fabulous and will reduce most audiences to tears. I have no hesitation in recommending this film.