Le Palais des hiéroglyphes - Sur les traces de Champollion

Mystifications

Everyone knows his name. The novels on the life and crimes of Hannibal Lecter are a worldwide phenomenon, and so are the movies and the TV show. Not mentionning the parodies, the plays... and even a wine named after him! He has become an icon of evil, but also of intelligence and refinement. Let's look back on the incredible Hannibal Lecter phenomenon.

A French documentary or, one might say more accurately, a mockumentary, by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick.

"Honey Hunters" is a life story of bees and people. In order to get to the bottom of the mysteries of the life of bees and show them to the audience, the camera enters a contemporary hive and a traditional wild beehive drilled in the trunk of an old tree. It wanders the forests in Poland and Ural, mountains in Nepal and... roofs of Paris and Warsaw. For millions years bees have been laboriously building the natural environment of our planet. These days, they started to die by millions. A programme of wild tree beekeeping reintroduction was launched in Polish forests. It has been an ancient local tradition. Maybe reaching for the past, the original model of coexistence of bees and people, for wild tree beekeeping, can help us to save the bees? After watching “Honey Hunters” everyone wants to have their own beehive and harvest their own honey!

The history of skiing is an amazing journey through small and big events starring strong and avant-garde people who were not afraid to break with the prevailing social prejudices of their time and invented a new sporting discipline.

Ben Fogle spends a week living inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, gaining privileged access to the doomed Control Room 4 where the disaster first began to unfold.

Huelva, Spain, an isolated region lost in time. The grass, the sand and the sky are the same that those foreigners saw in the spring of 1895, when they crossed the sea from a distant country to mark the unspoiled terrain and extract its wealth, when the tower was new, when people could climb to the top of the highest dune and imagine that the city of Tartessos was still there, in the distance, almost invisible in the morning brume.

The French female pioneer of immersion journalism, Maryse Choisy, who infiltrated in 1928 the prostitution underworld of Paris. Posing as a chambermaid, a lesbian bar dancer and more, she wrote a very successful and scandalous book about that avant-garde experience, and changed her mind about this world and these women's difficult condition.

In 2001, satellite imagery captured a mysterious “thermal anomaly” on an unexplored volcano at the ends of the Earth. What lies inside could provide new clues to help predict volcanic eruptions around the globe. But the island is so remote with conditions that are so extreme. No one has ever been able to reach the top to investigate what lies inside.. until now.

« Emmanuelle » was released 50 years ago. Its main character, played by the young Sylvia Kristel, delve freely into her sexuality, without taboo. This bold movie became one of the great success of french cinema in the 70s, and Emmanuelle became the face of sexual liberation. Through the gaze of a woman, the character is back on the screen in 2024. This new Emmanuelle, written by Audrey Diwan, go in quest of a lost pleasure.

Recently discovered footage reveals the secret history of NASA's first landing on the moon, and using this brand-new evidence, former astronauts and experts challenge everything known about the Apollo missions.

During risky expeditions in an underwater cave in Mexico, scientists unearth the skeleton of a 13,000-year-old prehistoric teenager to gain insight into the earliest known humans in America.

On April 17, 1975, the face of Cambodia would forever be changed. As Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into the capital city of Phnom Penh, the unsuspecting people of Cambodia had little idea they would be forced into a living nightmare that would last nearly four years. Rain Falls From Earth is a story of courage, a story of survival and a story of eventual triumph over the Communist regime that was responsible for the deaths of over two million people. The voices of many Cambodians are heard as they convey their thoughts, ideas and emotions - the very things they were forced to abandon in the "killing fields" of Cambodia. Their stories are an eyewitness account to genocide.

In the Frozen Tomb of Mongolia

Since the defeat, the Nazis, who were the masters of the occupied zone, and the French State, which had been ruling the so-called free zone since Vichy, ordered the Jews to take a census. From the spring of 1941, whether they had been French for several generations or naturalized for a few years, foreigners who had taken refuge in France or stateless people who had been driven out of their country, they were put on file, arrested or threatened at any time. Some wrote to the administration, or directly to Marshal Pétain, who seemed to them to be the last resort. These requests are called Suppliques. Men, women, sometimes children, tried as best they could, by all means, to loosen the trap. They address themselves to their executioners, but they do not know it.

A fascinating archaeological and scientific investigation on the world's best-selling book. When was the Bible written ? Who wrote it? Under what circumstances ? For what purpose ? These questions have long remained unanswered. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, the thorough study of the texts, the advances in science, and the recent archaeological discoveries, one of the greatest historical mysteries is gradually being unveiled. Meet the most eminent specialists in the Bible who try to unearth brand new information and answer the enigmatic and fundamental question : who wrote the Holy Book ?

Exclusively created with period engravings, this animated feature explores the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the ensuing Paris Commune revolution in 1871.

Determined to hold on to the throne, Cleopatra seduces the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. When Caesar is murdered, she redirects her attentions to his general, Marc Antony, who vows to take power—but Caesar’s successor has other plans.

The Rainbow Warrior was a Greenpeace ship that was bombed by operatives of the French government, in New Zealand in 1985, while heading to a protest against nuclear testing, tragically taking the life of photographer Fernando Pereira. Edward McGurn’s enlightening and exciting documentary uncovers a tangled tale of nuclear weapons, geopolitical coverups, and attempts to take action against impending environmental collapse. Was Pereira’s death an accident or part of a larger political plot?

The story of the Trojan Horse is probably one of the most famous stories ever told: after ten years of bloody war, the Greek coalition decides to lift the siege and depart, but not before leaving at the gates a huge wooden horse, which the Trojans confidently lead into the city. A few hours later, the once invincible Troy goes up in flames. What exactly happened? Is this myth true or false?