French President Nicolas Sarkozy's arrival in power and simultaneous split from his second wife Cecilia were to be played out on big screen Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, DPA reported.
The Conquest, a biopic about the leader by director Xavier Durringer, has caused a flurry of excitement in France, being the first feature film about a sitting French president.
Inspired by a British political satire In the Loop, the Sarkozy film, subtitled "The man who won the presidency, but lost a wife", it examines his ambitious, complex personality and relationships with women.
The premiere comes a day after Sarkozy's father Pal Sarkozy let slip to a German newspaper that the president and his ex-supermodel wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy were expecting their first child. The announcement, which confirmed France's worst-kept secret, comes as the country gears up for presidential elections in under a year's time.
Although he has not yet announced his intention to run, Sarkozy is expected to seek a second five-year term.
Respected film and theatre actor Denis Podalydes plays Sarkozy in the film, which appears to have irked the presidency.
Some of Sarkozy's advisers have described the irascible figure shown in the trailer as a "caricature." Bruni-Sarkozy has also said she his "worried" about the depiction of her husband.
Sarkozy himself has said he does not want to see it.
"Generally, I've never read what people say about me because I9m never happy," he told a French magazine.
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