Culture, une affaire d'État

"What could be more unsettling than a man close to death whose profound arrogance drives him relentlessly to hang onto both his power and his writing, to the bitter end?" In the twilight of his second seven-year term, François Mitterrand was alone. Ravaged by illness and abandoned by a large majority of the Socialist Party, who would not forgive him for the disastrous outcome of the March 1993 elections, the Head of State was preparing to tackle a second round of cohabitation with the right wing. However a series of unexpected tragedies and revelations would arise, casting a shadow over the end of his reign…

This is the unlikely story of 21 ministers and prime ministers who have crossed or are crossing the french Fifth Republic today. Twenty-one politicians who, from one day to the next, find themselves at the head of a ministry by the grace of a President of the Republic and his Prime Minister. The formation of the government, conflicts of attribution, reshuffles, rumours of appointments, evictions, casting errors: it is all the capricious backstage of the games of power examined here under the angle of confidence and which sheds light on the prestigious but unknown function of minister. An original and instructive political saga on the reality of those who hold or have held this prestigious position.

A philosopher of complexity, Edgar Morin has renewed the figure of the intellectual. Born Edgar Nahoum in Paris in 1921, he joined the Communist Resistance in 1942, where he adopted the pseudonym Morin, which he never abandoned. Author of about a hundred books, doctor "honoris causa" of about forty universities in the world, he never stopped promoting human brotherhood.

By making the Elysée Palace the most coveted, and also one of the most mysterious residences in France, the founder of the Fifth Republic surely never imagined that his successors would discover the immense solitude of power there. De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard d’Estaing, Mitterrand, Chirac, Sarkozy, then Hollande: Each of them had the opportunity to experience the dizzying nature of supreme office in this 18th century palace with the appearance of a bunker. It is this intimate, solitary and silent history that is recounted here, through key events, previously unheard accounts, and rare archive footage. The film reveals above all how heads of state are capable of secretly walling themselves up in serenity, gravity, tragedy, or dignity, as they embrace their destiny along with that of France.