Christophe Nick

Cruelty, psychological and sexual violence, humiliations: reality television seems to have gone mad. His debut in the early 2000s inaugurated a new era in the history of the audio-visual. Fifty years of archives trace the evolution of entertainment: how the staging of intimacy during the 80s opened new territories, how the privatization of the biggest channels has changed the relationship with the spectator. With the contribution of specialists, including philosopher Bernard Stiegler, this documentary demonstrates how emotion has made way for the exacerbation of the most destructive impulses.

The young generation sees their future at risk. They rebel against a lifestyle that threatens to destroy the world. The corona crisis also highlighted the deficits of our globalized economy and society. Does this crisis hold a chance for change for the better? The film draws a picture of the mood of the young generation and goes on a search for traces of ideas and concepts for a world after Corona in France, Germany and Poland. What is really important for young Europeans and how do they assess their future prospects? What scares them and what makes them hope? And who stands in their way and brakes? The TV presenter Aline Abboud meets young activists and artists for this, but she also listens to the opposing voices. Especially in Poland the youth are deeply divided, more and more are getting involved in conservative or nationalist right-wing organizations, while the country is slowly drifting into an anti-democratic dictatorship.

The Game of Death is a documentary co-produced by France Télévisions and Radio Television Switzerland1 in 2009 and staging a fake game show (The Xtreme Zone) during which a candidate must send electric shocks increasingly strong candidate to another until voltages that can cause death. The staging reproduces the Milgram experiment carried out initially in the United States in 1960 to study the influence of authority on obedience: electric shocks are fictitious, an actor pretending to suffer, and objective is to test the ability to disobey the candidate who inflicts this treatment and who is not aware of the experiment. The notable difference with the original experience is that scientific authority is replaced by a television presenter, Tania Young.

Investigative documentation in the four major nuclear energy-using countries Belgium, Germany, France and the USA: everything that touches on nuclear safety is a military secret. And therefore closely guarded. Whoever provides information about this could even give terrorists "evil thoughts". But how safe are citizens in the event of a nuclear terrorist attack?

In autumn 2016, demonstrations sprang up all over Europe against the CETA free-trade agreement between the European Union and Canada. The reason? An obscure clause which allows multinationals to sue nation states if they feel their profits may be damaged by government decisions. An investigation into the hidden world of international arbitration.

The true story of the seven weeks that changed China forever. On June 4, 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations were violently and bloodily repressed. Thousands of people died, but the basis for China's future was definitely planted.

In the summer of 1963, François Mitterrand was going through a deep existential crisis. His political career was at a standstill and, after 19 years of marriage, the couple had grown apart. It was at this point that François Mitterrand met the woman who was to give new meaning to his life. Anne Pingeot, aged 19, was to become the companion of a lifetime, a woman who would be with him throughout his rise to power and who would remain by his side until his last breath. For the first time, Anne Pingeot has agreed to allow the fragments of this passionate love story — hundreds of letters and a diary — to be shown on television, before being donated to the National Library.

French current affair show

A look back at the social movements, revolts and youth subcultures from the post-war period to the present day: after the World War II, the left-bank of Paris became a mecca for jazz and alternative living, youth culture was born with trailblazing American movies, and rock became the soundtrack to a generation that wanted to change everything.

How, from the 1920s to the present day, financial power has gradually strengthened a hidden alliance with criminal organizations around the world.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Tsetung established a system of labor camps for systematic repression, known as Laogai, an abbreviation for "Reform Through Labor". In such camps, forced labor and physical and mental torture were used to bring about a so-called mental reform, re-education in the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party. Millions of Chinese were affected. Many were executed. In hundreds of camps, the Party took advantage of the prisoners' free labor to build the economy. Self-criticism and denunciation were often the only way to escape martyrdom. Successive waves of purges culminated in the Cultural Revolution, which saw massive human rights abuses, political assassinations, massacres, and exiles in remote parts of the country. Using unreleased archive footage, the documentary tells the story of the invention, development and improvement of China's totalitarian system of surveillance and repression up to the present day, never told before.

Drug trafficking was invented by a state: the United Kingdom. In the 19th century, the British Crown flooded China with opium to replenish its coffers. From the very beginning, opium, heroin and cocaine became political instruments in the hands of states. Great powers, pharmaceutical companies, banks and intelligence services all played a role in the spread of drugs and in the emergence of the world’s largest criminal organizations. From the Opium Wars to the birth of the French Connection, from the hippie years to the rise of the great drug barons, from Escobar to El Chapo, from the mountains of Afghanistan to Wall Street, a political history of drugs takes shape.

The specter of drug trafficking haunts Europe. Struggling with ultra-violent criminal groups that control the vast majority of cocaine trade, European police forces are overwhelmed. The epicenter of all this trafficking: the Netherlands. A nation at the forefront of international trade and drug policy. This two-part film delves into the origins of European drug trafficking through the unique history of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.