Stafford Film Theatre – The Marching Band

Emmanuel Corcel / France 2025 / 103 min / Cert 15 / Subtitles

This French comedy-drama, ‘En Fanfare’ looks at nature versus nurture in a thoroughly engaging, even feel-good way. A renowned young classical conductor receives a shock cancer diagnosis and needs a bone marrow transplant.

Learning that he is adopted, Thibault finds the brother he wasn’t aware of: Jimmy, who works in the canteen of a struggling northern factory — and plays trombone in the work’s marching band.

Despite the initial class/ culture difficulties, and responses to their very different upbringings, they come to share a common purpose (musical, as well as medical!).

Sometimes moving, sometimes painful, sometimes laugh-out-loud, this was the top-rated film at the recent ICO Screenings.