A new screen version of Hugo's novel

Fred Cavayé's Les Misérables opens in French cinemas on Wednesday, 14 October 2026. The film runs 179 minutes and adapts Victor Hugo's novel, first published in 1862. Cavayé, originally from Rennes and 58 years old, wrote the adaptation himself, and the production has a budget of 35 million euros. Vincent Lindon plays Jean Valjean and Tahar Rahim plays Inspector Javert, with Camille Cottin, Benjamin Lavernhe, Noémie Merlant, Vassili Schneider, Megan Northam and Marie Colomb in the other leading roles.

The story

The film follows Jean Valjean, freed after 19 years of hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread. He builds a new life under a false identity and becomes a respected notable whom everyone trusts. After helping Fantine, a dying working-class woman, he promises to rescue her daughter Cosette from the cruel Thénardiers. His past catches up with him when Javert, a policeman with a troubled past of his own, begins hunting him to send him back to the penal colony. The action is set in a Paris in the middle of revolution, where Valjean must protect Cosette and complete his redemption.

Cavayé's approach to the novel

Cavayé speaks of the book with evident enthusiasm and says the work could fill many films.

This work is crazy, you could make eight films out of it.

He says he found whole stretches of the story that had never been adapted, notably Javert's childhood, and he finds the duality between Javert and Valjean especially rich. He also discovered that Thénardier, at the end of the novel, leaves for the United States to become a slave trader. Drawing on Hugo's feminist writings, he says he gave the female characters more strength. Ouest France singles out Megan Northam as a Cosette full of force and describes an impressive barricade scene. Cavayé wrote the screenplay with Lindon in mind, and the two men had worked together before on the 2008 thriller Pour elle.

Cast and reactions

Tahar Rahim, who plays Javert, argues that the film, like the book, offers awareness rather than a ready solution to misery. He says people created the poverty Hugo wrote about, and therefore people can end it.

If man created it, he can eradicate it.

Benjamin Lavernhe, who plays Thénardier, says it is a little sad that the story needs retelling, while seeing a political dimension beneath the thriller, action and love story. Camille Cottin, who plays Madame Thénardier, says the film keeps hope in humanity alive.

Les Misérables shows that faith in humanity and love can triumph.

Earlier screen versions and reception

The novel has been filmed many times. LesEchos.fr dates the first adaptation, L'Enfant de la barricade by Alice Guy, to 1906. The most recent earlier version, Jean Valjean by Eric Besnard, came out less than a year before this release.

Le Figaro's critic finds no original point of view in the new version but credits it with real craftsmanship and an excellent cast. The film opens on Wednesday, 14 October 2026, with a runtime of 179 minutes.