Arte Distribution

In the Middle Ages, Paris gave birth to the world’s most famous stone edifice: Notre-Dame. 7 centuries have passed since its construction. Watch history come alive thanks to 3D reproduction of the monument. A dramatic tale of ambition, talent, destruction, blood and rebirth. 

We tell the incredible 700 year saga of the builders and Church’s Men who invented modern day architecture in France and throughout Europe. Driven by the quest for perfect harmony, they created one of the most emblematic sacred monuments known today. 3D animation and documentary will come together in a history film to give an accurate representation of this great historical fresco. Indeed, the fictional tale, entirely in animation sequences will be the backbone of the film, around which the documentary scenes will be built to provide specific historic and technical explanations.
 

It was in the 12th century that the foundation stone of Notre-Dame was laid in Paris, under the impetus of Bishop Maurice de Sully. Thus began a gigantic construction site: stonemasons, blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, all the guilds were involved in building the monument. 

Motivated by faith, driven by the ambition to build a cathedral whose dimensions would outshine even their wildest dreams, the builders of Notre-Dame invented a new architectural style that soon inspired the entire West: ars francigenum, or French art.

In the 13th century, when the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris had just been completed, its builders had to push themselves even further: the new cathedrals that were springing up all over Europe offered them new grandiose technical challenges and competition. 

Hundreds of men and women put in countless hours to embellish Notre-Dame de Paris and enable this jewel of stone, wood, iron and glass to stand the test of time. For her trials were not over: she would have to face wars, revolutions and, above all, the ravages of time. In the 19th century, two men in particular have made the cathedral more relevant than ever: Victor Hugo magnified it in his novel Notre-Dame de Paris, and the architect Viollet-Le-Duc thoroughly restored it. His passion for the cathedral brought it back to life. Thanks to him, Notre-Dame became the beating heart of Paris, once again.

After the success of Season 1, this season 2 presents new dates: the trial of Socrates, the foundation of Rome, the death of Louis IX, the fall of Constantinople and many more... The series is conceived to potentially become a key reference in teaching history.

A date is a snapshot, a flashback which requires crossing disciplines such as history, art, archeology and literature for a vibrant and sensitive reading of the past. It arouses our childhood curiosity, recalling when we dreamed of a time machine.

 
 
List of dates:
-399, The Trial of Socrates
1270, Death of Louis IX in Carthage, Birth of Saint Louis in Carthage
1610, The Assassination of Henry IV
October 1860, The Sacking of Peking
1776, The American Independence
- 753: The foundation of Rome
1453, The Fall of Constantinople
315-317 and 1440, The Donation of Constantine
751, The Battle of Talas and the Advent of the Tang Dynasty
1848, The Spring of Nations
 

This series tells world history through a few major dates, revisited through the prism of memory. Driven by the accessible and passionate delivery of historian Patrick Boucheron, history comes to life under our eyes with bold and entertaining graphics.

A date is a snapshot, a flashback which requires crossing disciplines such as history, art, archeology and literature for a vibrant and sensitive reading of the past. It arouses our childhood curiosity, recalling when we dreamed of a time machine.
The series is conceived to potentially become a key reference in teaching history.
 
List of dates:
323 BC: Death of Alexander the Great
33 AD: Crucifixion of Jesus
24 August 79: Destruction of Pompeii
24 September 622: The Hegira
1347: The Black Death
1431: Fall of the Angkor Empire 
1492: The New World 
20 June 1789: The Birth of the French Republic
6 August 1945: Hiroshima
11 February 1990: Liberation of Nelson Mandela
 
ALL EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH.

For 60 years, Fidel Castro was a thorn in the side of USA and a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle. Castro and his compatriots played a prominent role on the international stage and contributed to changing the world. 
 

Castro and his team changed the world in a way that was inconceivable for a mere Island in the Caribbean. By sending troops to fight alongside left-wing revolutionaries in Africa, and using soft power to influence other regimes in Latin America, Cuba–in Fidel’s words–"was a small country which behaved as if it had the resources of a great power". Moreover, he managed to get away with it for more than three decades.
For the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution in 2019, with views from every side: the Cubans, the Russians, the Americans, and the rest, this film reveals the history of Cuba as never before.
Award-winning producers Temps Noir (Cuba, an African Odyssey, Africa, history of a continent) and Brook Lapping (Obama Years, Putin, Russia and the West, Iran and the West) put their talents together to produce a fascinating insider account of 60 years of Cuba’s history and its place in the world.
 
 

From a founding text by Karl Marx, thinkers in economics and social sciences from around the world are invited to reflect on the origins of the terms that structure our lives. Our entire capitalist system is dissected to open up the discussions on the world of tomorrow.

Understanding our everyday lives, by looking at what is happening inside the contemporary economic engine. 

This film, consisting entirely of archives, will recount the daily lives of both German civilians and soldiers during the six years of WW2, from its start in September 1939 up to the months following the German surrender. A plunge into the private lives of a people on the path to self-destruction.

April 1945. The allied bombings had reduced Germany to ruins. The American and Soviet forces were concentrating on Berlin. Yet even when everything was already clearly lost, the Germans continued to fight for the Nazi regime to the bitter end. However, when the Second World War exploded six years earlier, the idea of war was deeply unpopular amongst the German population.
How can such a tremendous shift in public opinion be explained ? What did the Germans believe they were fighting for ? Were they aware that they were leading a genocidal war? Why did the German people continue to fight to the death, despite the bombings, hardships and deprivation, convinced that they were fighting for their survival ?
Based on The German War. A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45 - the innovative work by the historian Nicholas Stargardt drawn from a Herculean research effort - this film, consisting entirely of archives, will recount the daily lives of both German civilians and soldiers during the six years of the Second World War, from its start in September 1939 up to the months following the German surrender.
Constructed from the letters, diaries and eyewitness accounts of Germans from all walks of life, the film plunges us into the lives of the men and women who lived through the tornado born of their own violence. Soldiers writing to their fiancees or their families, World War I veterans, members of Hitler Youth, persecuted Jews, anti-Nazis, priests and pastors, journalists, writers... The words they left behind reveal the personal thoughts of a people at war, raising the curtain on the mechanics of the Nazi regime.
 
This is a direct dive into the tsunami of World War II, when Nazism pushed its mortal logic to the extreme end.

In May 1992, a motorway near Palermo, Sicily, explodes killing Judge Falcone and several people of his inner circle, marking the climax in the war between the Italian State and the Cosa Nostra that killed thousands. One year later, after a 25-year manhunt, Toto Riina, the Godfather of all Godfathers, is finally arrested and brought to justice in a historic trial.

In a 5-year in depth investigation, discover how a young rural mobster took power in the 1970’s over the Cosa Nostra, Sicily’s legendary mafia, torturing and killing each competitor one by one, becoming the most feared and violent organized-crime leader ever.  He broke the mafia code by declaring war on the Italian State, multiplying assassinations and establishing terror among government, police, the judicial systems and the Sicilian people.
 
This is the story of the rise and fall of Toto Riina, through interviews of prosecutors, judges, police officers, lawyers and his own inside-men who are now repentant and have accepted to collaborate with justice.

For 60 years, Fidel Castro was a thorn in the side of USA and a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle. Castro and his compatriots played a prominent role on the international stage and contributed to changing the world. 

Award-winning producers Temps Noir (Cuba, an African Odyssey, Africa, history of a continent) and Brook Lapping (Obama Years, Putin, Russia and the West, Iran and the West) have put their talents together to produce a fascinating insider account of 60 years of Cuba’s history and its place in the world.
 
Castro and his team changed the world in a way that was inconceivable for a mere Island in the Caribbean. By sending troops to fight alongside left--‐wing revolutionaries in Africa, and using soft power to influence other regimes in Latin America, Cuba–in Fidel’s words–"was a small country which behaved as if it had the resources of a great power". Moreover, he managed to get away with it for more than three decades.
 
For the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution in 2019, with views from every side–the Cubans, the Russians, the Americans and the rest – this film will reveal the history of Cuba as never before.
 

The working class has played an essential part of European countries’ history – through revolutions, wars and social progress.  In 4 episodes of a spectacular tale, this show reminds us of what our societies owe to the workers’ movements and its struggles.
 

The story begins in the 18th century. But their fight carries on today. Much of our current democracies’ institutions and values flow from older working class demands: universal suffrage or social solidarity are some of its most telling examples. Our culture – the way we dress, the songs we listen to, the movies we watch and the mass-media themselves – heavily relies on the workers’ erstwhile popular culture. Finally, all across Asia, Africa and Latin America, millions of women and men experience lives similar to the 18th and 19th centuries’ European working class. We will bring out the present’s ever looming shadow by constantly flowing back and forth between history and current situations. Those contemporary testimonies and photographs will help us gather the threads of memory between yesterday and nowadays together again.

Famous for its ghost, the Garnier Opera House is above all the product of a titanic building site and the window of a time, the Second Empire. From 1852 to 1870, eighteen years of flamboyance made Paris the capital of modernity and the seat of "the civilization of opera".

This 90-minute documentary aims to tell the story of the great Paris construction of the Garnier Opera House, which lasted 14 years (from 1861 to 1875). While plunging into the backstage, its wheels and its legends, it will explain the special place it occupied in what Nietzsche called the "civilization of opera", the golden age of the bourgeoisie based on the appearance and the spectacular, which was then put in place. By the admission of Charles Garnier, the Opera as a whole was to serve as stage for the new elite of the time. From the story of its construction and architectural details, we will open windows on historical, social, political and artistic themes that will be treated to the image by paintings, period photos, film clips, animations in 3D and historical evocations (fiction). We will also call on specialized speakers on these different themes. Interviewed in studio and in situ, they will guide us, step by step, in this building still alive and full of anecdotes. Throughout the story, we will also follow the myth of the ghost, invented from scratch by the novelist Gaston Leroux, and so well integrated into the monument that it remains today THE symbol and an important key to understanding. Finally, music and ballet will be present in this film, in the form of musical excerpts and lyrical performances.