It was a project that Téchiné wanted to make since 1972, but only after the favourable reception of Souvenirs d'en France (1975) and Barocco (1976), he was able to find the necessary financing.

Four young siblings: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne, live a stoic existence in a small village in the English country side.

Emily plays the piano at school, but has a hard time there and is teased by her classmates for being English and Protestant in a Catholic country.

Emily is relieved and helps Branwell to find solace, taking him to the Black Bull Inn, the tavern and hotel of the town.

However, the novels of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, the pen names adopted by the three sisters, are the talk of London literary circles.

In the company of Mr. Nicholls and her publisher, Mr Smith, Charlotte goes to the opera in London and meets the famous author William Thackeray.

Since the silent era, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights have been adapted in to film multiple times.

The only Hollywood production made about the Brontës was Devotion, a film directed by Curtis Bernhardt in 1946 that had tried to capitalise on the success of Jane Eyre two years earlier.

Starring Ida Lupino as Emily, Olivia de Havilland as Charlotte, Nancy Coleman as Anne and Arthur Kennedy as Branwell, Devotion made no effort at historical accuracy.

[citation needed] The Brontës of Haworth, a four-part drama made for Yorkshire television, was broadcast in 1973 with a script written by Christopher Fry; directed and produced by Marc Miller.

[citation needed] Téchiné biopic on the Brontë, conceived in the early 1970s, was only the third project on the famous authors lives and the first accurate portrayal of them to be made on film.

[citation needed] Only one production has taken the story of the Brontë family since then, To Walk Invisible, a British television film first aired on BBC on 29 December 2016.

To Walk Invisible cast was headed by Finn Atkins as Charlotte, Charlie Murphy as Anne, Chloe Pirrie as Emily, Adam Nagaitis as Branwell and Jonathan Pryce as their father, Patrick Brontë.

Isabelle Adjani had come to international attention under the direction Truffaut in The Story of Adele H, playing the mentally disturbed daughter of Victor Hugo.

She and the cinematographer Bruno Nuytten, who had photographed Barocco, where then a couple and she gave birth to their son around the time of the film’s released.

Pascal Greggory was an unknown actor with only few minor acting credits in films, but he was chosen above Alain Delon and Patrick Dewaere for the role of Branwell.

The prior year she played the real-life criminal Violette Nozière in Claude Charbol's movie which won her the Cannes Film Festival Of Best Actress.

Patrick Magee, a veteran Irish actor known for his work in two Stanley Kubrick's films, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon, took the role of the father.

Both editions include an audio commentary with film critic Wade Major and Brontë scholar Sue Lonoff de Cuevas.