Bringing patriotism and romantic heroism onto the screen in huge images - that is actually a specialty of Hollywood. But the French can do it too! The film “Eiffel (in Love), a German-French co-production, is dedicated to the most famous building in France and its creator, Gustave Eiffel. In the 19th century, the engineer and his bold steel structures were seen as the Grande Nation's calling card, as an expression of its innovative charisma. He built from Africa to South America, from Budapest to Saigon. At the height of his fame, he was just helping to complete the Statue of Liberty in New York, and he returns to Paris in the late 1880s. The French government pressured him to design something spectacular for the 1889 Paris World's Fair. He hesitates, doesn't really want to - until the encounter with his childhood sweetheart lets him reach top form.

The film tells not only of the patriotic show of strength behind the landmark of Paris, dramaturgically pepped up with a forbidden love, but also of the massive resistance of the Parisians, to whom the 300-meter-high steel colossus in the middle of the city initially breathed more fear than pride. Postponed again and again due to the corona, "Eiffel" is now coming to the cinemas at the right time: on the one hand, it satisfies the currently politically troubled national pride of the French, on the other hand, it helps the starving tourism industry by simply whetting the appetite for Paris again.