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In Moscow, religious power and political power work hand in hand in building Russia’s new ultra conservative and imperial identity. Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church is Putin’s ally. He leads his church, influences Russian society and participates in international debates. 
 

The Russian Church is back : helped by Putin who saw in this institution the useful cement of a Russia without future plan after the fall of Soviet Union, the church tries to impose its views on social issues in its country and wants to play a parallel diplomatic role abroad, to get back to its status under the Czars.  Exceptionally, Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, has agreed on being filmed during a year, and takes us to meetings with Russian political leaders he invites in his Moscow cathedral, with the Palestinian president Mahmood Abbas, or above all with Putin, with who he parades ad infinitum. Their plan ?  Restore Holy Russia, propose a reactionary alternative to the western powers, that both denounce even to caricature. 

Sarah Schwartz has been travelling the world, from big top to big top, for over twenty years. She has made the circus her world. A high wire at her feet leads her from one country to the next. 

In this collection, she invites us behind the scenes of the circus dream, revealing its highly singular world. Taking part in a convoy with Sarah Schwarz means discovering a country in a different way: through the steamed up window of a caravan, a different shade of world goes past, a nomadic world, a world of freedom.
With Sarah, we set out to discover a universe that will help us understand the countries visited, bringing us wisdom and knowledge, but also magic and poetry. From the family circus to contemporary circus, from the travelling circus to the permanent circus, we discover countries that are different from each other, yet are all planets in the same galaxy. Roll up, roll up, for a magical, brightly coloured world tour!
 
EPISODES AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH DUBBED VERSION: 
MEXICO
INDIA
 
EPISODE AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH SUBTITLES: 
RUSSIA
 

Huge territories, communist legacies, authoritarian leaders: China and Russia have much in common, as the good personal relations between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin seem to show. Mapping the World demonstrates that behind the façade, the two countries have a much more complex and ambivalent relationship.
 

Apart from Tolstoy's readers, few people actually know about the battle of Borodino, fought some 100 km from Moscow. Even today it remains a landmark and symbol of the Russian resistance to the invader Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Despite being a tactical loss, the Russians still hail it as a victory, albeit a Pyrrhic one. It so happens that the Nazi tanks also got bogged down at about the same place 130 years later in 1942. But in 1812, the battle of Borodino was glorified by the manipulative power of the official gazette published by Napoleon's Great Army – it was rebranded as the “victorious battle of Moscow”. But even using all the propaganda tools at his disposal could not make up for its dire consequences: the time and troops lost at Borodino allowed Tsar Alexander to empty Moscow and to set a psychological as well as a strategic trap for the French Emperor.
 

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israeli photographer Edward Kaprov visited the Donbass three times, from Kharkiv to Bakhmut all the way to Kherson.

To document the front line, he chose the collodion process, a technique that made it possible to document a war in photographs for the first time. That was in Crimea.
170 years later, he immortalized on glass plates the images of the Ukrainian conflict, placing his sensitive gaze on slices of life, capturing snapshots of men, women and children.... A deeply humane odyssey that questions the reality of war.
 
"I was born in a country that no longer exists: the Soviet Union. I grew up in Siberia, which is now geographically in Russia, but I am not Russian. The country I lived in until I was 17, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, had a culture and an atmosphere that are nothing like Russia. When I saw Kyiv being bombed on the morning of February 24, 2022, I didn't believe it. It was crazy to hear Vladimir Putin say that he was going to "denazify" Ukraine! It was unthinkable, insane. We had not seen anything like that since the end of the Second World War. Never would I have imagined́ witnessing a conflict of this scale. Both of my grandfathers were from Ukraine. This war is my war."

Their names are Vassili, Lena or Varfolomey... Some are retired, others are monks or teachers. They live in Luhansk, a region in the Donbas which was annexed by Russia on September 30, 2022, along with three other Ukrainian regions.

Over there, they all help and support each other, often resisting though they don't have any water or power, as they wait for the better life promised by their new president. In the steaming ruins, they painstakingly invent the future of a Russia that Putin dreams of.
While the fighting continues, Moscow's forces are busy putting buildings, roads and public services back together. A way to establish a lasting presence in occupied cities.
A rare trip to the Kremlin-controlled regions where one of our teams was able to go, unescorted for the first time,.For while the war in Ukraine is covered by the world's media on the western side of the front line, what happens on the other side is still a mystery.

In Ukraine, one town has never been hit by Russian bombing: Oujhorod, at the western end of the country, capital of the Transcarpathian region, which borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

This mountainous landscape of mystical beauty is the only place in the country where the sound of bombs does not echo. Here, life goes on peacefully, at least on the surface, with little concern for the front line, more than 1,000 kilometres away.
Yet you only have to pass through each commune to realise that this region also paid a heavy price for the war: dozens of memorials pay tribute to the men who died in the fighting. And there are many of them. Throughout Ukraine, men over the age of 18 were, without exception, liable to be sent to the front. Many of them, in the early days of the war, enlisted voluntarily to defend their homeland.
But despite the drama unfolding further east, the Carpathians remain a haven of tranquillity where Ukrainians come to recharge their batteries. For a summer, tourists, mothers and children, citizens displaced because of an occupied city or under Russian fire, flee the horror of war. It's also a place where the wounded who have been evacuated from the front are cared for: at Uzhhorod hospital, the rooms are filled with soldiers who are being treated as best they can, with a view to their return to civilian life...
In the summer of 2023, the Ukrainians seem to have emerged from the state of shock into which the Russian aggression plunged them in February 2022. The ceremonies and celebrations for Independence on 24 August were more joyful.
They all say they have no choice: fighting is a duty, resisting the Russian invaders has given them a new lease of life.

360° GEO - Report portrays a changing wine region that is torn between the ancient traditions of its soviet heritage and modern market requirements.

In the Soviet era, Georgia was said to be the wine cellar of the USSR.
Even after the collapse of the huge empire, wine remained one of the country's most important export goods. But since Russia has imposed an embargo, exports have declined dramatically.

Georgia is now in search of new sales markets at a time when winegrowing in its Caucasus region is in full swing. Small winegrowers, cooperatives and winegrowing estates based on the Western model vie with each other for quantity and quality.

THE ECLIPSE, OR THE COURTSHIP OF THE SUN AND MOON - THE HUMAN FLY - GOOD GLUE STICKS - THE GENII OF FIRE - IN THE BOGIE MAN'S CAVE

THE ECLIPSE, OR THE COURTSHIP OF THE SUN AND MOON
France 1907
Among a class of unruly students, an astronomy professor explains that the solar eclipse
is supposed to take place in a little while. He then goes to his observatory to witness the
event. Indeed, he sees the moon pass in front of the sun, in a comical love scene. The
stars and planets march in space, then a shower of shooting stars fills the professor with
wonder as he moves forward, wishing to see them more closely... but then falls into a tub
of water.

THE HUMAN FLY
France 1902
Six graceful Russian dancers surround a muzhik who performs a lively dance. He climbs
along the side of a wall, continuing to dance and pirouette as if he were suspended in air.

GOOD GLUE STICKS
France 1907
A street peddler gets his revenge against some police officers who prevented him from
selling his merchandise. However, the police enforcement, assisted by bystanders, has
the last word in the end.

THE GENII OF FIRE
France 1908
An overly-curious young girl leads her fiancé into a mysterious cave despite the warnings
of a priest. While attempting to break into the entrance of the Fire Genie's palace, the
couple is blinded by the flames. However, when they exit the cave, the priest gives them
back their sight.

IN THE BOGIE MAN'S CAVE
France 1908

4 renowned reporters, first-hand eye witnesses of news in perpetual movement, revive the memory of little known or forgotten conflicts: Patrick Chauvel in Chechnya, Rémy Ourdan in Iraq, Bénédicte Kurzen in Nigeria and Marcel Mettelsiefen in Syria.

1994, Boris Yeltsin launched a Russian Federation armed-forces defensive on Chechen separatists seeking independence. Instead of a whirlwind war, Russian military forces found themselves up against fierce resistance by the Chechen fighters.
Photographer Patrick Chauvel was in Grozny when the conflict erupted. He goes back over the incredible violence of the fighting, starting with his own photos. He recalls a few encounters: the beautiful photographer Heidi Bradner, the Chechen fighters whose daily lives he shared, the young inexperienced Russian soldiers, local inhabitants etc.
For 40 years, Patrick Chauvel has photographed a large part of the conflicts that have rocked the world. He is one of the last of a generation of reporters to have experienced the Six-Day War, Vietnam, Cambodia, Ireland, Iran, Lebanon, Panama, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria. He has narrowly escaped a hundred deaths: he has been wounded numerous times. He has received the World Press Photo commendation, the most prestigious photojournalism award.

Panic in the auditorium of the Dubrovka Theatre, Moscow, october 23, 2002: 800 people have been taken hostage by a commando of 40 Chechen fighters. Over the next three days, a drama unfolded. A one-act tragedy.

That night, early last winter, the actors of Moscow's Dubrovka theatre company got ready to perform, as they did every night. As always, the auditorium was packed. A few dozen people were still waiting to see if there were any last-minute cancellations for the Russian hit musical Nord-Ost, which had premiered in the year 2000.
Suddenly men in unfamiliar uniforms burst into the auditorium. There were shots and screams. Startled, then frightened, the actors were hustled off the stage. The audience initially thought it must be part of the show. As it dawned on them that this was for real, they were stunned, unable to move. There was panic in the auditorium of the Dubrovka Theatre.
800 people had been taken hostage in central Moscow, by a commando of 40 Chechen fighters - 800 people who were rooted to the spot in their red plush theatre-seats.
Over the next three days, a drama unfolded - a one-act tragedy that respected the unities of time, place and action and took place behind closed doors but was broadcast all over the world. This was terrorism as theatre - the composition of the images, their transmission and the media coverage seemed to have been expertly orchestrated by the Chechen commandos, with security-cameras showing an astonished world live pictures of the hostage-takers bursting in on the scene, the shots, the impact of an early announcement, the lead actor being physically kicked off the stage and the orchestra pit empty of its musicians.
The rest is history: the attempts at mediation by assorted negotiators, to-ing and fro-ing between the hostage-takers and the police cordons; the contradictory information; the first deaths; and above all the final assault - blood, a mysterious lethal gas, and the bodies of the living and the dead piled up indistinguishably. The final death-toll was 129 hostages and all 40 members of the commando.