Laurent Fabius

Fourty years ago, in May 1981, with François Mitterrand's election, some people were letting themselves dream about a better life while others were predicting the coming of soviet tanks upon the Champs-Élysées. If we gladly remember the turning point of austerity in 83, there were also the wage rises, the fifth week of paid leave, the abolition of death penalty, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, or the advent of independent radio stations. Rare archives and accounts by those who were at the heart of this story give an overview of it and shed light on lesser-known aspects.

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism or crime, the major powers have embarked on a dangerous race for surveillance technologies. Facial recognition cameras, emotion detectors, citizen rating systems, autonomous drones… A security obsession that in some countries is giving rise to a new form of political regime: numerical totalitarianism. Orwell's nightmare.

In the mid-1980s, the GAL, a Spanish paramilitary group, pursues and assassinates members of the terrorist gang ETA who have taken refuge in the sanctuary they have created in the south of France. Grégoire Fortin, advisor to the French Minister of Justice, and Domingo 'Txomin' Iturbe, leader of ETA, are forced to negotiate in order to find a solution to the violence that plagues the region.

In a series of long interviews, 12 prime ministers talk about their experience in the upper echelons of power. The function of prime minister, torn between the president and the parliament, appointed without necessarily being elected but responsible for everything, is at the center of debate. With the exception of Jacques Chirac (1974-1976 and 1986-1988), deliberately left out because of his image as French President, those who governed France for the past 35 years agreed to discuss the exercise of power, as seen through archive footage, but also how they experienced it personally. Filmed in the same studio and sitting in the same chair, 12 French prime ministers talk freely about their time in office, from their appointment until their resignation.

"Homosexuality, this painful problem "... It was thirty years ago, the title of a program of Ménie Grégoire! But what has happened since the seventies, when France was transformed and the gay movement emerged? For gays and lesbians, thirty years of fights, hopes and despairs, thirty years of parties, sufferings and mournings, victories and emancipation. Thirty revolutionary years, pink and black, on which Yves Jeuland has examined, in an approach that is at once documentary, historian and ethnographer. First part: "Red years" (1971/1979) "Pink years" (1979/1984) Second part "Black years" (1983/1991) "Rainbow years" (1992/2002)