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.

Nominee at the Buzzies of World Congress 2020: award for the Best History Program/Content - Long Format

World history through a few major dates: history comes to life under our eyes with bold and entertaining graphics, revisited through the prism of memory.

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.

A series of discussions with international specialists who think the world through the prism of property. We will explore this multi-faceted concept with a loose temporality, through the ownership of body and mind, our rights and the idea of collective property. 

In 2022, how to conceptualize property? Can we move away from a solely Western vision? What can we learn from the vision of traditional societies in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania? How was it historically understood in China, India or Japan? And how is it understood today in the Anglo-Saxon world, where property ownership, as in the Middle Ages, is often divided between ownership of the land and ownership of the house or building (leasehold/freehold)? 
Is the cycle of property rights we are in still expanding, or is it coming to an end? With the sharing economy, are we replacing the principle of exclusive exploitation by that of shared use? Will the commons model become dominant? 

Discover the evolution of modern China, through 150 years of history and key figures like Empress Cixi, Mao Zedong and Jack Ma. The country lost its leadership position, then bounced back to soon become the world’s most powerful.

This historical and geopolitical investigation explains how China reinvented itself to return to its former greatness, thanks to the action of political key figures but also the help of those who remained in the shadows. Combining exceptional archival images, unique animation and the words of international historians, this documentary overturns the West's view of China.

Mafias and Banks: two opposite worlds. They share the same taste for luxury, risk, and easy money yet they despise and fear each other and are both inextricably linked to the government.

For a long time, criminals robbed banks, disemboweled and emptied their safes. It was not until the end of the Second World War that the mafias began to understand all the benefits they could make from banking institutions, and then from finance.

10% of the wealthiest Americans hold 80% of the country’s ressources. This film dissects the capitalist storytelling that helped perpetuate the American Dream for over 150 years, from Rockefeller to Bezos. 

Culture, advertising, public relations and above all philanthropy are the weapons of a genuine gospel of wealth, which, despite the inequalities, continues to nourish the American psyche. Until when?
 In 2018, the three wealthiest Americans’ estimated worth equals that of about half of the least wealthy Americans together; or 162 million people. Since its inception, the United States has been capitalism's very own Promised Land. But the accumulation of wealth cannot come at the expense of democracy – as the founding fathers, themselves multimillionaires, said. Too many inequalities heighten the risk of chaos. Capital versus democracy: a very American equation.
 
1. The Merchants of the Temple (1870-1945)
2. The Republic of Consumers (1946-1980)
3. Unfettered Wealth (1981-2021) 

Targeted assassinations, bombings, unidentified military attacks are piling up all over the Middle East. Can the "secret war" between Iran and Israel turn into a major regional if not global confrontation?

The two countries are nowadays the two dominant powers in the Middle East. Their conflict is reinforced by the renewed tension between the United States and Iran since President Trump decided to leave the nuclear agreement. Based on unprecedented archival research, access to high profile players in Israel, Iran, Lebanon and the US, the film looks back over the forty years that followed the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Civil war in Syria, to offer relevant keys to understanding the new Middle East.
 
 

SPECIAL MENTION at FIGRA 2021

The myth of the Red Army has been the USSR's foundation for 70 years as an instrument of fear and admiration, as well as a symbol of liberation. How far did they go to maintain this image?
 

While everyone knows that Trotsky's name is attached to his creation, most of its past is made up of military defeats and failures, contrary to the common idea.
 
 

This film sketches a very personal and decidedly political portrait of the Iron Lady who left the greatest mark on the UK, alongside Queen Elizabeth II. Archives and interviews are enriched by songs from this period that really help to understand the social atmosphere of that time.

Margaret Thatcher remained in power for eleven years, six months and 24 days. When her death was announced in 2013, spontaneous demonstrations of joy brought together citizens of all ages across England. The Wizard of Oz song Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead! immediately rose to the top of the charts, embarrassing the BBC. Margaret Thatcher was the embodiment of the childhood nightmare of a world, the new neo-liberal Western world, which was just beginning to change, determined to rid itself of the cumbersome legacy of post-war Keynesianism.

Through exclusive film archive and written journals, we will reveal one of the lesser known chapters of the end of the Third Reich, a story of unbelievable brutality and murder.

In the final months of the Second World War, 700,000 prisoners were evacuated from concentration camps and sent on the roads throughout Europe. Between 250,000 and 300,000 died from exhaustion or were massacred by the guards or even civilians in Austria and Germany.

This film tells for the first time the story of the Katyn massacre seen from both sides: That of the victims and that of the perpetrators. It reveals how this crime, attributed to the Nazis for 50 years, was in fact carried out by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD.

In April 2020, it will be 80 years since the slaughter. The name Katyn has come to embody this large-scale massacre carried out in the greatest secrecy. In a clearing near the city of Smolensk, on the border with Belarus, many of these soldiers, mainly officers, were executed. First blamed on the Nazis, the cover-up endured for five years. It was only on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union that Mikhail Gorbachev was finally forced to acknowledge Stalin’s responsibility in the perpetration of the crime. His successor, Boris Yeltsin, opened the archives that provided the long-awaited evidence.
Eighty years later, through archives and animation, Cédric Tourbe tells the story of the Katyn massacre from the side of the victims, and for the first time, from that of the executioners. This slaughter says much about the workings of the Soviet regime, based on a police force operating in unbelievable secrecy.

Festivals: 
Selection at the Lauriers de l'Audiovisuel 2021

Famous for its ghost, the Opéra Garnier of Paris is above all the product of a titanic building site and the symbol of the birth of a new era. From 1852 to 1870, eighteen years of flamboyance made Paris the capital of modernity.

This documentary  - written by Stéphane Landowski  -  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.