Arte Distribution

Did you know that the Statue of Liberty was once a lighthouse? That the Great Wall of China was built with rice? That Frankenstein's monster owes everything to an Italian frog or that at a certain time in Switzerland spaghetti grew on trees?

The incontournable tells you the unknown story of an emblematic place. A story that the great encyclopedias have scratched from their pages. Dramas, hoaxes, scientific experiments, tasty intrigues, forgotten heroes, the incontournable is all about learning History in a differently while traveling to where it took place.

Since the beginnings of journalism, nothing has beaten people talking about ideas and facts. To bring you current affairs with body and an extra dose of soul, ARTE REPORTS favours encounters with real people.
 

Every week, ARTE REPORTS reviews in images the events that made the headlines.

What if bodybuilding was not just a simple sporting and aesthetic discipline? What if the practice was actually conforming to the social pressures of our neoliberal society, by celebrating and encouraging the constant surpassing of oneself?

With the help of illustrious weight trainers and experts, All Brawn offers a fascinating look into the history and culture of this art of performance. Gain insight into this mass phenomenon, a metaphor for the obsession with control and cost-efficiency.

This documentary series takes up where fictional adaptations leave off and tells the real-life stories they are based on, using a wealth of archive material to retrace the extraordinary lives of the ordinary people involved.

Everyday folk are all the rage - and they often make excellent fictional characters. Since the 1990s, our interest in true stories has skyrocketed. The shelves of bookshops are lined with them, and they fuel box-office hits. "Based on a true story" has become a favourite advertising hook, with its promise of strong emotions and dramatic events. Over and above its selling power, our fascination with real-life stories says much about the times we live in and our hunger for authenticity. In a world in which traditional moral criteria are becoming blurred, society is desperately searching for something real to hold onto. And people reason that if a story is true, it could easily have happened to them.

Loic Prigent opens the secret doors of Paris Fashion Week. Interviews of creative directors, journalists and influencers help us understand this obscure microcosm and give us the keys to fully apprehend this hidden industry.

Loic’s camera films discreetly and lets the viewer observe as a real attendee of these crazy fashion moments. Paris Fashion Week enables the audience to finally experience and understand the unique circus of fashion shows.
 
AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH: THE EXCEPTIONAL SHOW

These nine modules will immerse us in the very heart of Japanese society, in the very heart of Tokyo, its energy, its fantasy, its contradictions. The documentary series will decipher "Japan from inside out", in a fun, odd and offbeat way.

The gachappon is the equivalent of jukebox: a vending-machine for junk surprises, a spectacular mechanics like a pinball machine and addictive like a slot machine. But instead of delivering a plastic gift, a video capsule will emerge to help us discover this distant and fascinating country by its less known side: small daily realities!
Each of the nine episodes of the documentary web series Gacha Gacha is designed in a fun discovery mode, to dissect nine typically Japanese rites. Ways of doing things that are both millennial and hypermodern, disciplined bodies and lively minds, a very modest and suddenly exhibitionist daily life. Technological and spooky materials, sounds and colors.

Since the beginnings of journalism, nothing has beaten people talking about ideas and facts. To bring you current affairs with body and an extra dose of soul, ARTE REPORTS favours encounters with real people.

Every week, ARTE REPORTS reviews in images the events that made the headlines.

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.
 
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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 series explores the history of drug trafficking from a political perspective and reveals the murky role played by many states which have used the drug trade as an instrument of power. Opium, heroin, cocaine, and designer drugs have sparked wars, financed militias, and brought down states.
 
 
Selected at the Realscreen Awards in the category of non-fiction - archive-based program.

In the year 38, the first anti-Jewish pogrom swept through the city of Alexandria, in Egypt, under the Romans. Ever since, anti-semitism has plagued the world, and while we thought that the worst had happened 80 years ago, it is still showing its ugly face.
 
 
 
 
 

2000 years of history explained by 30 of the best international historians, brought to life by animated  3D reconstructions developed by Ubisoft. A landmark series that aims to be a reference for future generations.

40 minutes in total immersion in the fashion world with Mademoiselle Agnès. Ten days of fashion, stimulated by the new generation of designers, reassured by the old guard, and dazzled by hallucinating scenography.

As every season Mademoiselle Agnes immerses herself in the backstage of women's ready-to-wear to take the tension of the business, to measure the height of the heels as well as the morale of the troops.
 

In remote Morocco, in 1960, in the archeological site of Jebel Irhoud, a remarkable find was made: remains of Homo Sapiens. Today we can date them back to 300.000 years old.

A discovery that rewrites the story of Mankind’s origins, because up until now, the oldest remains found went back to 200.000 years ago! A revelation that not only stretches the timeline of Homo Sapiens’ story, but also changes the geography of where we came from, the whole sub-Sahara region.