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.

In April 2019, the world held its breath as Notre Dame, the most wondrous of cathedrals, almost burnt to the ground and with her 800 years of history.
Our film tells Notre Dame’s story, starting in the Middle Ages, when master builders reinvented the art of construction to erect Gothic cathedrals. 

Eight centuries of passion, talent, blood, destruction and rebirth, during which time the cathedral witnessed some tumultuous moments in the history of France, from the most glorious to its darkest periods. A gripping docu drama that uses 3D animation combined with exclusive footage and interviews of historians, writers (such as Ken Follet, The Pilars of the Earth) scientists, architects and engineers.

*Also available: NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS: THE AGE OF THE BUILDERS*
 

In April 2019, the world held its breath as Notre Dame, the most wondrous of cathedrals, almost burnt to the ground and with her 800 years of history.
Our film tells Notre Dame’s story, starting in the Middle Ages, when master builders reinvented the art of construction to erect Gothic cathedrals. 
 
 

Eight centuries of passion, talent, blood, destruction and rebirth, during which time the cathedral witnessed some tumultuous moments in the history of France, from the most glorious to its darkest periods. A gripping docu drama that uses 3D animation combined with exclusive footage and interviews of historians, writers (such as Ken Follet, The Pilars of the Earth) scientists, architects and engineers.
 
 

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 April 2019, the world held its breath as Notre Dame, the most wondrous of cathedrals, almost burnt to the ground and with her 800 years of history.
Our film tells Notre Dame’s story, starting in the Middle Ages, when master builders reinvented the art of construction to erect Gothic cathedrals. 
 
 

Eight centuries of passion, talent, blood, destruction and rebirth, during which time the cathedral witnessed some tumultuous moments in the history of France, from the most glorious to its darkest periods. A gripping docu drama that uses 3D animation combined with exclusive footage and interviews of historians, writers (such as Ken Follet, The Pilars of the Earth) scientists, architects and engineers

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.

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.

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.

From the 1880’s to today, discover the incredible saga of global drug trafficking, heroin, cocaine, opium, cannabis and other synthetic drugs. In a in depth chronological investigation, global geo politics and power struggles between states will be analyzed through an original angle.

There are few commodities as global as drugs. How this trade influenced relations between states, global financial interests, secret diplomacies, secret special forces and mafias, on all continents over a century in a half.

This film, consisting entirely of archives, recounts 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.

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.

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.