François Devienne

When he arrives in Saint Petersburg, at the age of 29, Marius Petipa is just an obscure dancer who fled western Europe to escape his debts. He is far from imagining that his engagement in the troupe of the Russian Imperial Ballet, then rather mediocre, will reveal him, forty years later, as one of the greatest choreographers in the history of dance. It is within the Bolshoi Kamenny theaters, then Mariinsky, in a still provincial capital where three productions a year are enough to satisfy an undemanding audience, that this native of Marseille will invent a new art of ballet, over the course of sixty of creations, between 1862 (La fille du pharaon) and 1895 (Le lac des cygnes).

April 14, 2017 marked the 105th anniversary of the most famous shipwreck in the world. It is still not finally clear why the White Star Line luxury liner sank in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage. The documentary accompanies an expedition to the wreck of what was the largest ship in the world at the time.

Over several generations, the story of an aristocratic French family spanning the 20th Century, from the two World Wars to the social and political upheavals of May 1968. Facing adversity, old Duke Sosthène tries to keep traditions alive.