Ministre ou rien

"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…

Culture ... an affair of state, it is a historical novel journey to the heart of the Fifth Republic Cultural Affairs of France. Malraux, first holder of the ministerial office in 1959, to Catherine Tasca, in 2002, the film tells the scenes of major events during the cultural policy of the state: the case Langlois around the Cinematheque Landowski case-Boulez on the reform of music, the construction of Beaubourg, the Louvre, the conditions under which the music festival has been decided or that the cultural exception publicized. From archives, interviews or testimony, it is a political reading of unexpected contemporary artistic life which is at issue here.

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.