ARTE Distribution

At the height of the Cold War in 1957, at a time when the USSR and the USA were locked in ferocious competition, the US federal government created the "National Radio Quiet Zone". This vast area of 33,000 km² in rural Virginia, where radio communication is restricted, is used for scientific research and military intelligence.

One year after the devastating floods that ravaged Pakistan in summer 2022, millions of victims are still in need of humanitarian aid. A third of Pakistan's territory was submerged, affecting 33 million people and displacing 8 million.

A series made of hijacked images to understand in a funny and quirky way how our opinions are influenced, and our consent manufactured. Discover from the inside the range of strategies used without our knowledge to shape our desires!

These documentaries take us to six cities on the very margin of Europe, Istanbul, Belgrad and Lisboa, which nonetheless look towards it.

The programmes focus on young Europeans living in these cities, presenting them as individuals, exploring their similarities and their differences, and revealing how they see and experience Europe.
 

A web documentary series with young people from these two cities.

The project will be part of the process of opening up in the Americas, thus overcoming 50 years of one of the last Cold War conflicts.
For three months, with three stories coming from both sides, Internet viewers will have access to a virtual wall where they will see videos from Havana and Miami, as well as contributions (videos, pictures and texts) coming from the audience. The project will be first on line and will prepare the ground for a television film. The project will be a coalition of producers and broadcasters from Europe, the US and the Hispanic world so as to make it a real global coproduction.

The "All European!" collection takes us travelling around Europe, meeting its inhabitants.

These men and women - whose occupations include those of boxer, herbalist, social worker, magician, teacher, and carpet-layer - are all European. With their strong and surprising characters, they are part of their territory. Based on the principle of meeting people, each film reveals a personal and sensitive portrait of a character in their day-to-day environment, and asks our neighbours how they feel about Europe. Over a succession of encounters, the collection builds up a humane and singular European landscape.

POLACHROMES completes the EUROPE ATTITUDE collection with sketchings of 3 of the cities' symbolic places.

POLACHROMES completes the EUROPE ATTITUDE collection with sketchings of 3 of the cities' symbolic places.

Astrid and Stéphane are going to get married. All is going well.

They already have a small boy, they love each other and their parents are content. All is going well. But it is necessary to organize the event. And so the difficulties begin...

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS completes the EUROPE ATTITUDE collection with 3 of the cities. The idea of this collection is to translate the emotions we can feel when, far from home, we arrive in a foreign city for the first time ; the moments when we get off the plane, the car, the boat.

Architectural, historical or artistical emotions...
Some emotions most of the time translated through encounters we can make there.
With some good characters, ordinary or extraordinary, but always likeable. The pleasure of shooting from dawn on Friday to twilight on Sunday, to go through the city as in emergency, but with a special care. To capture the breathe of this city, its movements, its peculiarities, its future. We follow these people in their daily lives in different places, we discover the city and its history through these lives.

"Real people" welcome us into their homes, far off the beaten track, and allow us to get to know their countries, their families, their jobs or their passions.
75 portraits make up this living mosaic of Europe!

Strong, surprising and remarkable personalities - Leo, a boxing-mad broker from London; Enda, an Albanian designer who's preparing her first fashion-show in Tirana; Elisabetta, a Sicilian woman who, after travelling round Europe, takes over the family olive-oil business; Bosse, a Finnish biker who's also a doting father; Jean, a priest in the Belgian Ardennes who at the age of 70 is going to leave his parishioners in order to marry the love of his life; Didda, a grocer-woman from Reykjavik who dreams only of poetry; Gabriela, a struggling Slovakian actress who's waiting for her dream-role. All these different faces of one and the same Europe.

As Bulgaria and Romania swell the ranks of the member-states of the Union, the goal of the Welcome to documentary collection is to create a living mosaic of Europe, day by day, far from the institutional machine.

Welcome to bears in equal measure the imprint of young authors and experienced directors, such as Solveig Anspach, Nino Kirtadze, Manu Bonmariage, Cyril Mennegun, Dominique Gros, Judit Kele, Vassili Silovic, Patric Jean, Peter Vaclav and many others.

2007 : Special Mention at Doc en Courts (Lyon, France) for LITHUANIA: WELCOME TO DOVID'S WORLD

Family Album looks at the way we bring up our children nowadays, explores topical issues relating to childcare and education, and examines the ways in which the structure and role of the family are changing in today's Europe.

The series sets out not only to inform and compare, but also to promote reflection on traditional practices and new developments - some of which are immediately accepted, and some of which meet fierce resistance - in all areas of family life - the last bastion of our national cultures and identities. It covers a wide range of themes, from pre-school education and language learning to abortion and who does the housework.

PRISONERS OF BECKETT is the meeting of two worlds that never usually converge.
One is comprised of poetry and freedom, the other silence and obscurity.

It's a true story, which begins in a high security prison in Sweden, where a young actor, Jan Jonson, decides to stage "Waiting For Godot" with a cast of five prisoners.
Their performances turn out to be so unique and genuine that Beckett grants them the right to perform his play and follows the enterprise from his Parisian retreat.
Soon everyone is gripped by feverish enthusiasm: the prison governor, an exceptionally bizarre character for the post, and Jan Jonson convince the authorities to let the five actors step outside the prison walls and perform in a real theatre in Gothenburg. An extraordinary concession followed by an even more spectacular event!
Beckett's Prisoners is a film and a puzzle, half tragedy half farce, which reconstructs this adventure and sets off in search of its heroes today.