After the death of Kansas-born editor Arthur Howitzer Jr., journalists prepare an obituary in memory of the best-respected ideologue of the widely read American newspaper supplement, The French Dispatch. His colleagues are based in a French city, whose name could be translated as “a world-weary boredom”, and their memories of Howitzer come together in four stories: a travelogue entitled “The Cycling Reporter”; “Concrete Masterpiece”, about an insane painter, his guard, his muse and art dealers; “Revisions to a Manifesto” a story of love and death during a student uprising; “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” is a suspenseful tale of drugs, kidnapping and fine dining.

American auteur Wes Anderson has said that he has always wanted to make his own kind of “French cinema”. His latest anthology film is a visually ambitious tribute to independent journalism, print media and freedom of press. In fact, the film, which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, plays with this freedom with his characters that are inspired by real historical The New Yorker writers, the visuals of a geometric diorama and real made-up stories spread across different countries. Collaborating with actors such as Bill Murray in the role of Howitzer, Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Timothée Chalamet, Christoph Waltz and many others, Anderson brings an alternative chronicle of the mid-20th century to life. It was an era when authorship and style meant something different, as did who did the reporting and how things were printed.