TGV, génie français du rail

De Charles de Gaulle à Emmanuel Macron, les gardiens de l'empire

A multibillion-pound investment is underway to make our railways bigger, better and faster. Over three years, we go behind the scenes with Wales’s newest rail body as they try to make ambitious promises a reality.

Police à bout de souffle

At the close of Jacques Chirac's life, politician Jean-Louis Debré has wished to make a film to celebrate his friend, to tell the story of their friendship and professional understanding, and to make an intimate portrait of the former President of France through the accounts of a few very close friends. Thanks to Jean-Louis Debré's presence, Claude Chirac and some of Jacques Chirac's closest friends, famous or unknown, agreed to talk to the camera, sometimes for the first time, to evoke their untold-before memories and tell about the moments that bonded the two men for a lifetime.

Un peu, beaucoup, passionnément... Les Présidents et les Français

The story of the Avro Arrow, the world's fastest fighter plane built in 1950's Canada, and how the project was dropped due to political pressure from the United States.

La Cerisaie

55 years ago, on October 1 1968, the first brand advertising spot appeared on the French television screen. Over the next three decades, thousands of creative little films would seduce and build our collective memory. Kitschy or cult spots, humor, slogans, music, stars, gimmicks, grand spectacle or sex appeal: during its golden age, how did advertising convince? Thierry Ardisson has brought together almost 400 advertising clips to relive the era of the conquest of minds and wallets.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme

French actors Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Aïssa Maïga, Sonia Rolland, Deborah Lukumuena, Marie-France Malonga, Gary Dourdan and others speak up on the reality of black actors in the French movie industry.

An exploration of Rodez Cathedral and its stained glass windows: praying figures and scientific imagery. A study on color, repetition and flickering consisting of 292 photographs.

Filmed during a visit to Jerome Hill in Provence, Jonas Mekas sets his Bolex to capture a single day overlooking the port of Cassis. Shot frame by frame from morning to sunset, the film distills shifting light and color into a quiet meditation on time, place, and perception.

Spains Worst Rail Disaster

La Ve, une constitution sur mesure ?

In 1968 Joan Bakewell was one of the few female TV presenters, fronting the BBC's Late Night Line-Up and addressing daily the most pressing issues of the time. In this film she looks back at the events that led to what for many became the defining event of that extraordinarily turbulent year - the protests in France in May. While the rest of the world was in turmoil, with the Vietnam War causing increasing dissent, the Civil Rights movement growing in intensity and young people finding new ways of expressing themselves, as 1968 began it seemed to France's president, General de Gaulle, that his country was immune to the kind of protest sweeping the rest of the world.

The Channel Tunnel linking Britain with France is one of the seven wonders of the modern world but what did it take to build the longest undersea tunnel ever constructed? We hear from the men and women, who built this engineering marvel. Massive tunnel boring machines gnawed their way through rock and chalk, digging not one tunnel but three; two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. This was a project that would be privately financed; not a penny of public money would be spent on the tunnel. Business would have to put up all the money and take all the risks. This was also a project that was blighted by flood, fire, tragic loss of life and financial bust ups. Today, it stands as an engineering triumph and a testament to what can be achieved when two nations, Britain and France put aside their historic differences and work together.

Charles de Gaulle, the first president (1958-1969) of the Vth Republic, France’s current system of government, left his mark on the country . He was statesman of action and has been compared to a monarch. This film depicts the general’s personality through the great events of his presidential term, at a time when the world was undergoing considerable changes.

Mythos Côte d'Azur - Liebe, Luxus, Leidenschaft

A look at the rise of anti-Semitism and assaults against Jews in present-day France.

Danielle Mitterrand, une certaine idée de la France