Michel Hazanavicius Wraps 'The Third Hand' — a Silent, Colour WWI Fable — as Sales Launch for Toronto

Michel Hazanavicius has finished shooting The Third Hand, a silent film in colour, and sales agent Goodfellas will launch it to buyers at the Toronto International Film Festival, according to Deadline. A first image from the production has been released alongside the announcement.

The film is Hazanavicius's second silent feature, after the black-and-white The Artist, which won five Academy Awards in 2011, including Best Picture and Best Director. Where The Artist was a love letter to Hollywood's transition to sound, The Third Hand is billed as "fantastique" — a French genre label blending fantasy, horror and the uncanny.

The story follows Paul Marchand, a young French soldier wounded at Verdun during the First World War, who wakes in a mad scientist's laboratory to discover a German hand grafted onto his abdomen. The premise is adapted from Arthur Dreyfus's 2023 novel by Hazanavicius and Thomas Cailley, the French writer-director whose own The Animal Kingdom took top honours at the 2023 César Awards.

The cast is led by François Civil, one of France's most bankable leading men, alongside Bérénice Bejo — Hazanavicius's partner and the star of The Artist — plus Rebecca Marder and Michel Fau. Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat, who last collaborated with Hazanavicius on the animated feature The Most Precious of Cargoes, is writing the score. Cinematography comes from David Chambille, fresh off a César win for his work on Nouvelle Vague.

Hazanavicius is producing with Florence Gastaud under their company Les Compagnons du cinéma, with Patrick Sobelman also producing. Studiocanal and France 3 Cinéma are co-producers, with backing from the CNC (France's national film fund), the Île-de-France Region and Pictanovo. Studiocanal will handle the theatrical release in France. Goodfellas, an independent sales and production company whose catalogue includes The Artist itself, is offering international rights to buyers at TIFF — the Toronto festival doubling as a marketplace where distributors acquire finished films or projects for their territories.

What makes the project stand out is the reunion of several elements that last converged on The Artist: Hazanavicius directing a silent film, Bejo in front of the camera, Goodfellas handling international sales, and Desplat on the score. The difference is the palette — colour instead of black-and-white — and the genre, swapping Old Hollywood romance for a wartime body-horror fable.

No release date has been set.