Hot Picks: The Paris-Tokyo Job

Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t until 1986 that Japan experienced its first armoured truck robbery – but when it came, the crime set off an incredible turn of events that stretched continents and plumbed the deepest recesses of the country’s criminal underworld.

Taking place in broad daylight in Tokyo’s most exclusive district, the robbery was carried out by smalltime car thieves from the suburbs of Paris drawn into trafficking stolen Impressionist paintings to the Yakuza.

Among them was Philippe ‘Fifi’ Jamin, who was part of a gang that stole paintings including Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, and who helped to set off an extraordinary chase, with detectives tracking the gang across Tokyo, Bangkok and Mexico.

Yet what drew producer Philippe de Bourbon of Andaman Films to the project was that this was almost a story of “lovable amateurs”, he says. “The gang did not always seem to fully grasp the seriousness of what they were doing, and were extraordinarily lucky at several key moments of their adventure.”

That tone is felt across the show as events unfurl, delivering a docuseries that Bourbon says is not “a dark or brutal crime story”.

At the centre is Fifi, a larger-thanlife character whose personality shapes the series. “That combination – an extraordinary true story, a group of unlikely criminals, a great deal of luck, no violence, and Fifi’s irreverent way of looking back on it all – is what made me want to produce the series.”

Jérémie Rozan (Gold Brick) and Jérôme Pierrat (Cocaine Air: Smugglers At 30,000 Ft) were attached as writers and directors. Bourbon says the show was not easy to produce – a lack of archive material being one challenge, with the team choosing to use AI-generated sequences to illustrate certain aspects of the story.

Bringing together seemingly disparate parts of the story - the French criminal underworld, Tokyo in the 1980s, the world of the Yakuza – was also tricky, but the team worked hard to uncover archives, witnesses and the right visual language, to ensure it remained faithful to the period, he says.

“We wanted it to be cinematic and entertaining, but never superficial,” Bourbon continues. “There is a real sense of adventure and of the 1980s, but also something darker. The access to the protagonists and the strength of their testimonies give the series a level of authenticity that is quite rare.”

Distributor StudioCanal immediately saw potential in the story, joining at development stage, prior to sibling broadcaster Canal+ boarding the project.

The show’s “cat and mouse” elements, its exploration of the little-known world of the Yakuza and the story’s geographical reach provide international appeal, says vicepresident of international library sales Emma Baldit, who adds that having Fifi share his story for the first time was also a major coup.

“And the subject couldn’t be timelier: with museum heists back in the headlines after the recent Louvre theft, a docuseries built around the disappearance of impressionist masterpieces lands at exactly the right moment.”

Baldit expects the show to sell into Japan and perform well with European broadcasters and global streamers, with the “cross-border intrigue and stylish crime-thriller treatment” appealing. An Englishlanguage version will also help make the series export-ready.