Jean-Louis Debré

For thirty years, Zone Interdite has been the magazine that documents and analyzes the upheavals in French society. Conducted over time, the investigations broadcast in the program reveal the taboos, passions, and struggles of the French people at the heart of current events.

Salut les Terriens! is a French talk show hosted by Thierry Ardisson, launched on Canal+ on November 4, 2006, and then moved to C8 on September 10, 2016. The show subsequently changed its name and format in 2018 to become Les Terriens du Samedi! (The Earthlings of Saturday!). Initially conceived as a humorous take on current events with several guests and various games and segments, it later evolved into a more structured format with panel discussions and regular segments. In 2018, Thierry Ardisson sought to revamp the concept, believing the previous version had run its course, hence the transition to Les Terriens du samedi! with a new set and new segments, and a 360-degree turn in the ideology of the guests.

On October 4, 2018, France celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Fifth Republic. It is a republic born in the throes of the Algerian War and one which—from the day it was founded by General de Gaulle until the presidency of a very Jupiterian Emmanuel Macron—has been assailed as a “Republican monarchy” by partisans of a more assertive parliamentarian state. By revisiting the struggle of those who dared oppose the new regime — only to suffer a crushing defeat on September 28, 1958, when they were barely able to garner 20% of the vote against the constitutional text — this film shines a powerful new light on the origins of the Fifth Republic and its consequences for the next 60 years. It is a constitutional debate that planted the seeds for a complete upheaval of the French political landscape, on the left in particular, and set the country in motion toward what would be called the Union of the Left.

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.

A four-hour journey through the first ten years of Les Guignols. Cult sequences, historic sketches, reference expressions... offer sixty or so “Guignolized” personalities the opportunity to analyze the phenomenon or react to their puppets. Their impressions, shared with Gilles Verlant, punctuate the Night. All those who have made Les Guignols what they are today - Alain De Greef, the historical authors, puppet creator Alain Duverne, etc. - take the opportunity to reveal a few of their secrets.