The latest Spider-Man movie, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, and Medieval, with Michael Caine and Ben Foster, have been drawing all the headlines among movies currently shooting in Prague, but another major project has just begun production in the Czech Republic this month.
Resistance, a WWII drama starring Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Now You See Me), has just begun production in the Czech Republic, and the star has been spotted on location in the Czech capital over the past weeks.
In Resistance, Eisenberg stars as real-life performer Marcel Marceau, who as a young artist joined the French Resistance during Nazi Germany’s invasion of the country during WWII. Marceau and worked with Jewish Boy and Girl Scouts to save the lives of thousands of orphaned refugees.
Marceau, of course, would later become one of the world’s most famous mimes during a career that spanned six decades. Michael Jackson would credit him as the inspiration for the Moonwalk.
Resistance is directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, a Venezuelan director of Jewish-Polish heritage who previously made the Robert De Niro-Edgar Ramirez boxing movie Hands of Stone. Baptiste Marceau, Marcel Marceau’s eldest son, serves as one of the film’s producers.
Yesterday, scenes for Resistance were filmed in central Prague on Jindřišská street, standing in for occupied France in the early 1940s. Nazi symbols and regalia could be seen throughout the street surrounding Jindřišská Tower.
Work on the film will continue through October in Prague and other locations in both the Czech Republic and Germany.
German actor Matthias Schweighöfer joins Eisenberg on the project; other cast members have yet to be announced.
“The story of how a group of boys and girls scouts created a network that saved the lives of thousands of orphan refugees during WWII, would be worth telling even if the main character wasn’t the greatest mime of all time,” director Jakubowicz told press last year.
“The fact that Marcel Marceau is at the centre of it, and that he saved their lives thanks to his art of silence, makes this film a dream come true for any writer and director.”
Lead image: Jesse Eisenberg at the 2015 San Diego Comicon via Wikimedia / Gage Skidmore; Marcel Marceau in 1974
