Reinventing History Through Visual Effects

Selected for Cannes Classics, The Golden Age (L'Âge d'Or) is unlike any traditional period film.

Rather than recreating the twentieth century through elaborate sets or digital environments, director Bérenger Thouin chose to weave his fictional story directly into authentic historical footage, transforming decades of documentary archives into the backdrop of an entirely original narrative.

Achieving that ambition required visual effects to become far more than an invisible finishing tool. From the earliest stages of development, VFX helped define the film's visual language, making The Mill's collaboration an essential part of the creative process long before production began.

Building a new cinematic language

For Bérenger Thouin, the project began with a simple yet ambitious idea: telling the story of a complex female protagonist whose journey would unfold across the twentieth century. The archives were never intended to serve as historical illustration. Instead, they would become living cinematic material, seamlessly integrated into fiction.

We never wanted audiences to watch archive footage as archives," explains Thouin. "We wanted them to experience those images as cinema.

Developing that language required nearly a year of editorial experimentation before the cameras even rolled. Together with editor Rémi Langlade, the creative team explored hundreds of hours of archival footage, constantly moving between writing and editing. Newly discovered images influenced the screenplay, while the evolving script guided the search for new historical material.

Because visual effects would ultimately determine what could be achieved, Hugues Namur joined the conversation exceptionally early.

Rather than waiting until post-production, the director and VFX supervisor began exploring possibilities while the film itself was still taking shape. Every creative idea was evaluated together: could a fictional character naturally exist inside authentic archival footage? Could documentary images become dramatic scenes? Which ideas were technically achievable while remaining faithful to the project's artistic ambition?

Those discussions became part of the editorial process itself. Every sequence was developed with a clear understanding of the visual effects possibilities, allowing VFX to shape the storytelling from the very beginning.

Selecting the right tool for every shot

Around thirty archival sequences were ultimately integrated into the final film, each demanding its own creative solution.

Some shots relied on traditional compositing workflows. Souheila Yacoub was filmed separately against controlled backgrounds before being integrated into the historical footage. These sequences offered an efficient way to expand the world of the film while remaining cost-effective.

But many scenes demanded a far deeper level of immersion.

The goal was not simply to place the actress in front of archival images, but to allow her to genuinely exist within them, sharing space, exchanging glances and interacting naturally with people filmed decades ago.

For those moments, The Mill developed more advanced workflows combining several complementary techniques.

Depending on the archive, some integrations relied on refined 2D face replacement methods developed through years of production experience. Others required deep learning technologies capable of reconstructing facial performances under much more demanding conditions.

Rather than adopting one universal solution, every shot was approached individually.

We wanted to avoid creating a visual formula," says Hugues Namur. "If every archive was treated the same way, audiences would eventually recognise the pattern. Using different techniques kept the experience surprising while serving the story.

Technology guided by artists

While artificial intelligence played an important role throughout the project, Namur is careful to emphasise that it was never an automatic solution.

Historical footage presents particularly challenging material. Faces are often tiny within the frame, film grain interferes with detection, movement is unpredictable and image quality varies enormously from one archive to another.

Deep learning provided powerful new possibilities, but only under the right conditions.

Whenever tracking became unstable or facial detection failed, artists stepped in to repair, refine and complete the work using more traditional visual effects techniques.

The final result is extremely rewarding," explains Namur. "But even when deep learning is involved, there's still a tremendous amount of craftsmanship behind every successful shot.

Far from replacing artists, AI became another creative tool inside a much larger visual effects pipeline where artistic judgement remained essential.

Precision performance as the foundation

To support both traditional compositing and AI-assisted workflows, the production dedicated three studio days to capturing highly precise reference performances with Souheila Yacoub.

Every movement, gesture, rhythm and body position found in the archival footage was carefully recreated under matching lighting conditions and camera angles.

Rather than simply performing the scenes, Yacoub meticulously studied the original footage alongside director Bérenger Thouin, cinematographer Martin Roux and the VFX team to reproduce the exact timing and physicality of each historical figure.

These performances became an invaluable source of reference throughout post-production.

When deep learning techniques encountered limitations, the carefully captured reference photography provided the additional information needed to guide and refine the final visual effects.

The process also transformed the filmmakers' relationship with the archives themselves. Studying every frame in such detail revealed subtle human gestures and rhythms that enriched both the performances and the finished film.

Blending practical filmmaking with digital craftsmanship

Although the finished work relies on sophisticated digital techniques, many solutions remained surprisingly practical.

Some sequences required specially built platforms to recreate the movement of boats seen in archival footage. Others involved carefully measuring distances and camera angles with ropes outdoors to reproduce historical perspectives as accurately as possible.

On one occasion, the team realised the position of the sun no longer matched the original archive. Rather than solving the issue entirely in post-production, they simply reversed the shooting direction, allowing the natural lighting to align perfectly with the historical footage.

For Namur, this reflects the essence of visual effects supervision.

Rather than searching for one complex solution, the goal is often to break a difficult problem into a series of simpler ones, combining practical filmmaking with digital artistry to achieve the most convincing result.

When audiences stop seeing the visual effects

One of the film's greatest achievements is that viewers gradually stop questioning where documentary ends and fiction begins.

The audience recognises the texture of historical footage and understands that visual effects are involved. Yet as the narrative unfolds, those distinctions slowly disappear.

Actors become indistinguishable from people captured decades earlier.

Archival footage no longer functions as historical evidence alone. It becomes dramatic storytelling, allowing viewers to experience the past as if it were unfolding in the present.

This delicate balance between transparency and immersion was always at the heart of the project.

Rather than hiding the visual effects, the film embraces them as part of its cinematic language while allowing audiences to become emotionally invested enough to forget the technical achievement behind every shot.

A collaboration that began before production

Looking back, both Bérenger Thouin and Hugues Namur agree that the project's success was rooted in collaboration established long before shooting began.

By bringing The Mill into the creative process during the editorial development, visual effects became an integral part of the film's storytelling rather than a technical service added afterwards.

Together, the filmmakers developed a new way of working with historical archives, treating them not as fixed documentary records but as living cinematic material capable of carrying emotion, performance and fiction.

For Hugues Namur and the artists at The Mill, The Golden Age demonstrates how visual effects can become an invisible storytelling partner, helping filmmakers push creative boundaries while preserving the authenticity and emotional power of every frame.