"At first, I didn't know much about Joan of Arc. I had a stereotyped, classic image of her that wasn't very interesting. Then I took a closer look at her story out of curiosity, and it really read like a thriller – there are so many gaps, uncertainties and also errors that you start playing Sherlock Holmes in order to figure things out. In the fifteenth century, aged 19, this young woman had such conviction, had such a career, had such an incredible destiny that I was truly impressed. It's amazing to realize that she was sentenced as a heretic and made a saint. And it's interesting to realize that she could only be one or the other, as though she had no right to be normal, as though those two extremes were linked by an invisible thread."

Luc Besson – Director, excerpt from the press folder