4 Movies Set in or About French Guiana

4 Movies Set in or About French Guiana

Outside filmmakers looking toward French Guiana: optional perspectives for a wider journey.

1. 

   1. Papillon

   1973

   Wrongly convicted of murder, a defiant French safecracker is shipped to the brutal penal colony of French Guiana, where he forms a bond with a frail forger and becomes obsessed with a single goal: escape, no matter the cost. A gripping prison epic based on a true memoir.

   Why & details

   Curator’s note: A prison-escape drama about Henri Charriere's sentence in the French Guiana penal colony.

   Film notes
2. 

   2. Papillon

   2017

   A Parisian safecracker wrongfully sentenced to life in the notorious penal colony of French Guiana befriends a wealthy, bookish forger, and the two forge an alliance and a shared dream of freedom against a merciless system. A remake of the classic prison-break saga.

   Why & details

   Curator’s note: A remake of the French Guiana penal-colony escape story.

   Film notes
3. 

   3. Cayenne Palace

   1987

   A grieving young Frenchman travels to French Guiana in search of answers about his past, drawn into the shadow of the country's notorious jungle prisons. A moody drama.

   Film notes
4. 

   4. La Loi de la jungle

   2016

   A hapless ministry intern is dispatched to French Guiana to enforce European building codes on an absurd project — the Amazon's first ski slope — and ends up lost in the jungle with a fiery co-worker. A frantic, deadpan French comedy.

   Film notes