The Great Arch

It is the year 1983 and the French president François Mitterrand calls for a very ambitious architecture competition. He announces a worldwide contest to build the flagship project of his mandate. The aim is to construct a monumental work in the La Défense district of Paris with the purpose of becoming an urban vanguard and a symbol of the State.

Recognized names enter the competition; however, to everyone's surprise, the winner turns out to be an unknown. Johan Otto von Spreckelsen is not a trained architect, nor is he a respectable firm in the field. He is a fifty-year-old Danish professor who has only built his own house and three chapels to his name.

His life is not the same; he is faced with the project of the future "Arch of La Défense." The eyes of the whole world are on him. Moreover, he has political, economic, and aesthetic expectations that he had not counted on before.

''The Great Arch'' represents a clash between art and power. The idealism of a simple man and the state machinery that moves art and politics according to its interests. Will the professor be able to move forward with his project without succumbing to the pressure of those with greater wealth? Will he be able to live up to the country that demands a symbol of its own representation?