09-05-2025
Vincent Maël Cardona Talks Studiocanal Lottery Ticket Thriller ‘No One Will Know' + First Clip
EXCLUSIVE: French director Vincent Maël Cardona makes his Cannes Official Selection debut with huis-clos thriller No One Will Know, which premieres as a Midnight Screening.
The drama revolves around the clients and staff of the fictitious Le Roi Soleil café in the Paris periphery who unwittingly assist in the killing of an elderly regular just after he discovers he has won €294 million ($320M) in the lottery.
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With the life-changing sum in their sights if not their grasp, the disparate group battle with their consciences and one another as they figure out a way to explain the death, as well as whether and how to take possession of the prize.
'They have to agree on a scenario, a fiction and a way of recounting what happened, which is not what happened, in a convincing manner, that stands up to scrutiny,' says Cardona. 'They're doing the work of a screenwriter.'
'But the challenge is keeping the story up and running. The characters become victims of these stories, their own tendencies and desire to distance themselves from reality.'
Watch a first clip below.
Cardona says the movie has its origin in his reflections on the human psychology around the lottery, rather than a desire to make a huis-clos-style thriller.
'The framework came later,' says Cardona. 'The starting point was my interest in the practices of the people who play the lottery, this social phenomenon which touches all parts of the population, that says something deeper about it at the same time.'
'I hesitated a bit because there are a lot of films about the lottery. It's is its own genre, and one which I'm not necessarily a fan of… There's Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales, or Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends. I have this sense that as soon as we film someone winning the lottery, we're kind of feeding the propaganda about the winners, when most people lose.'
'What convinced me was my sense that there is nothing rational about playing the lottery. It has less to do with money, and more to do with belief and fiction. When we buy a lottery ticket, which costs less than a cinema ticket, we activate a personal film and story, which is very intimate, that we don't share with others. This fictional refuge in an increasingly materialist world touched me.'
Cardona professes to never playing the lottery himself, citing U.S. writer Fran Lebowitz's take on the game of chance.
'She said, 'Your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not', which for me is the quintessential phrase on the lottery,' he says, adding, however, that his film is not a critique of those who do play.
No One Will Know is Cardona's second feature after 1980s radio pirate station drama Magnetic Beats, which premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight to acclaim in 2021. It won the parallel section's collateral SACD prize, as well as Deauville's Prix d'Ornano Valenti and the 2022 César for Best First Feature.
Cardona suggests these accolades helped him secure the high-profile ensemble cast featuring Pio Marmaï (The Three Musketeers) and Sofiane Zermani (Hunting With Tigers) as two police officer colleagues; Panayotis Pascot (Loup Garous) as a paramedic, Lucie Zhang (Paris, 13th District) as a bar tender and Joseph Olivennes (Magnetic Beats), as a dissolute financial markets trader.
'I think the screenplay caught their attention, even if it also could have scared them off because, it's true, you could get lost. They really had to trust me. I think that is where the César helped,' he says.
They are joined by Pulp Fiction star Maria de Medeiros as the bar's eccentric landlady who stumbles in on their plotting.
'I was looking for something very particular, someone astonishing for this role, a rare specimen, if you like. I went in a lot of different directions. Of course, I had the memory of Maria de Medeiros in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and what she has done with Guy Maddin. I also met her out of curiosity…but she brings something special. Maria de Medeiros is a name that makes you dream.'
The events in the café are bookmarked by two scenes in the Chateau of Versailles: one contemporary and set against a no-expense spared corporate party, the other an reenactment of Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova's trip to Versailles in 1758 to float the idea of a royal lottery.
'I wanted to evoke this idea of society being ruled by money, with a big 'M' and the power of money, not just in its own right, but also for the way it impacts roles in society,' says Cardona.'Versailles which once embodied the vertical power structure has been completely deconsecrated. Today, all you need is enough money to rent it out, to play the king in a certain way,' he continues.
'It was a good starting point to touch on the strict and brutal class system in today's society, which remains pyramidal even if appearances suggest it's equal and democratic… we shot in Versailles, the Hall of Mirrors is really the Hall of Mirrors, and a bit in the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, which often doubles for Versailles.'
The $6.8 million (€6.7M) movie reunites Cardona with Magnetic Beats producers Marc-Benoît Créancier at Easy Tiger (Divines) and Christophe Barral and Toufik Ayadi at Srab Fims (Les Misérables, Saint Omer), alongside new partner Studiocanal, which has distribution and international rights.
'We're all from the same generation and were together on my first film. I also had the good luck to be back with many of the same crew,' says Cadona.
As No One Will Know launches in Cannes ahead of a late August release by Studiocanal in France, Cardona is already writing the screenplay for what he hopes will be his third feature.
He is keeping the details under wraps apart from the fact that it is a climate change-themed adaptation.
'I started looking into climate change a while back and as soon as I dipped my toe in this icy or boiling subject, I'm not sure which, I realized it was an urgent, complex, enormous and fascinating subject.'
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