Anthracite on Netflix: Where was the series filmed?

This Wednesday, April 10, Netflix brought Anthracite: The Mystery of the Sect of Cases online, its new French detective series starring Noemi Schmidt, Hetic, Camille Louis and Nicolas Goddart. In 1994, the collective suicide of a sect based in a small village in the Alps hit the headlines…

30 years later, a young woman is found dead, murdered according to the rituals of the community. Yaro Gatsi, who is guilty of seeking repentance, finds himself accused of the next crime. He then joins forces with Ida, an eccentric young woman, to prove his innocence.

Magnificent landscapes

It was in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region that the teams decided to set up the cameras for Anthracite: The Mystery of the Box Sect. A choice that is not insignificant, since Fanny Robert, one of the creators of the series, grew up in the region.

It was important to him to highlight the landscapes in which he grew up and above all to show that we can use the settings of France to offer quality fiction.

The designer also confided in the press briefing that he suggested some locations for filming. “There were a lot of places that I had dreamed about, or rather nightmared about, in my teenage years that I really had in mind and wanted to show the scouts.“

“There are plenty of sets they have yet to find. It was fun discovering my own region and places I had never heard of, never seen, even though they were close to my home. “

An abandoned hospital, a parking lot, a village nestled in the mountains…

Many different sets were needed to bring the iconic Anthracite sites to life. The fictional town of Leviona was filmed in two Vercor towns: La Mure and Pont-en-Royans, famous for its hanging houses.

The Resistance Museum in Vercors was the site of Arcadia, the cold and glorious laboratory at the heart of the series. Julius Berg, the director, explained that the camera crew had to cheat to create these grandiose images.

“Anthracite’s ambition was also visible. There are many sets that are divided into two or three parts. For Asylum, for example, we shot the exterior of the Cathedral of Our Lady. The cathedral was replaced by a somewhat Gothic building.“

“For the interior, we are in an abandoned hospital. For Arcadia Buildings, which is a very graphic, almost James Bondian setting, we shot at the Resistance Memorial. But the interior was shot in, for example, Grenoble’s town hall.”

“The boxes are a classified car park located in the heart of Grenoble. And we’ve shown in the series that the environment is buried, but it’s a building. Inside the box, where the screens are, is the studio.”

“It required gymnastics in terms of editing because sometimes these were scenes that we could shoot two months apart. Those were the challenges that were really cool as a director.Attention to detail that gives anthracite a special dimension.

Watch season 1 Anthracite: Secret of the Box Sect Now on Netflix.