While his Berlinale Competition entry Lady Jane will be released in France next week, French-Armenian director Robert Guédiguian has already announced his next project: the ambitious L'Armée du crime ("The Army of Crime"). Guédiguian will the story of the Manouchian Group, a WWII resistance movement led by the Armenian worker Missak Manouchian. Besides regular Guédiguian actors Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Yann Tregouët in supporting roles, L'Armée du crime will star Virginie Ledoyen (La doublure / The Valet) and Louis Garrel and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, the lovers from Les Chansons d'amour (Love Songs). French-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian (who voiced Marjane's father in Persepolis and also had a small role in Casino Royale) will play Manouchian.

Ledoyen will play Mélinée, Manouchian's girlfriend, while Leprince-ringuet and Garrel will play members of the Manouchian Group. The resistance group was captured by the Nazis via the French police and all the men were executed in February 1944, while the sole female member was beheaded the following May. The Nazis then publicised their deaths throughout Paris, renaming the gang the "Army of Crime," a tactic that backfired when the population realised these foreigners had given their lives for France.  

Filming on L'Armée du crime, which is the director's first real historical film, is slated to start in Paris mid-June and will continue through mid-September. Guédiguian will be working on a €9.2 million budget.

The screenplay was written by the director in collaboration with Gilles Taurand, with whom he co-wrote the Mitterand biopic Le Promeneur du champ de Mars (The Last Mitterand) and with Serge Le Péron, a director who is most famous for J'ai vu tuer Ben Barka (I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed), which starred Simon Abkarian in the title role. Abkarian's only previous collaboration with Guédiguian was on the director's 2006 effort Voyage en Arménie (Armenia).