Movies: French history

In 1894, French officer Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted for the treasonous acts of another man, Major Esterhazy. When investigations begin into the dubious evidence used in the trial, an institutional coverup begins, aided by fears of army disgr...

Based on the latest technological and scientific advances, this documentary explores the palace's architectural past to resurrect Louis XIV's vanished Versailles. Versailles was an ongoing building site at the time of Louis XIV and continued to be t...

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The National Library of France is the guardian of priceless treasures that tell our history, our illustrious thinkers, writers, scholars and artists. Telling the story of the exceptional treasures of the National Library of France is like opening a g...

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27 Olympic and Paralympic champions, aged 20 to 100, share their stories in this Mickaël Gamrasni documentary narrated by actress Marion Cotillard. As heirs to previous generations, they trace the incredible genealogy of French Olympism. The documen...

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Based on the model of documentary fiction (alternating period films, interviews and re-enactments with actors), the film begins on September 8, 1961 with the failure of the Pont-sur-Seine attack on a road convoy carrying Charles de Gaulle, then Presi...

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World War II, June 1940. France has fallen and suffers the relentless boot of Nazi Germany. But Algeria, the prized French colony in North Africa, remains part of the territory controlled by the Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain. A strict colonial order...

The chateau of Versailles is believed to have been a dirty palace: a place where everyone tossed the contents of their chamber pots from the windows above… Yet during the chateau’s construction, Louis XIV had given thought to commodities, and several...

Chambord, the most impressive castle in the Loire Valley, in France, a truly Renaissance treasure, has always been an enigma to generations of historians. Why did King Francis I (1494-1547), who commissioned it, embark on this epic project in the hea...

Focusing on five of them, this documentary pays tribute to the wealthy women who, under the Ancien Régime, promoted scholars and artists, and paved the way for female emancipation through their intellectual independence....

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Coffee is the second most important commodity in the world after oil. The drink has a long history and what's more, its effect seems to be stimulating in two senses....

Forty years after the abolition of the death penalty in France, voted on September 18, 1981, the guillotine remains in the collective imagination as the instrument of the death sentence. This machine, developed during the Revolution to render justice...

A history of the bridges of Paris, through modern views and historical engravings....

A still drawing film on the personality of Robespierre and the French Revolution....