Monuments Sacrés

Everywhere, throughout all epochs and civilisations, human beings have experienced and expressed the sacred, thus questioning the mystery and the enigma of human existence. Compared to other animal species, we have this strange uniqueness: that of wanting to give an ultimate meaning to existence and to enter into a relationship with invisible forces or entities. From this experience and from the fundamental quest for what we call "the sacred", all the religious and spiritual traditions of humanity have developed throughout history.

A captivating and vertiginous documentary on the relations between man and machines, in the heart of the laboratories where the humanoids of tomorrow are invented. We are on the eve of a revolution, that of the humanoids. These robots with a human face are more and more efficient: they walk, see, hear, speak - They look like two drops of water, are ready to enter our lives, our homes, and are even capable of learn about our own condition. Roboticists believe that, in ten years, androids will be part of our daily lives as well as individual computers. Are we ready?

In emblematic places around the world, Frédéric Lenoir, philosopher, sociologist and writer, goes to meet those who experience a spiritual quest, both religious and secular. A pilgrimage that mixes the voices of anonymous witnesses and personalities such as the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, the apneist Guillaume Néry and the astrophysicist Hubert Reeves.

For more than a century the great colonial powers put human beings, taken by force from their native lands, on show as entertainment, just like animals in zoos; a shameful, outrageous and savage treatment of people who were considered subhuman.

They have no roots, no seeds, no flowers, but mosses show immense survival capacities and can suspend their biological activity for long periods. Today, researchers are exploring the exceptional resistance of these archaic organisms. British ecologists have even resurrected a "zombie" moss that has been trapped in the permafrost for 1,500 years. Associated with decay and disliked in Europe, mosses are deified in Japan. With 25,000 species worldwide, bryophytes - their scientific name - are the seat of real ecosystems, and can develop in inhospitable landscapes, through an extravagant reproduction cycle.

In the Namunyak Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya drought is a menace to both humans and animals. This documentary follows two Elephant Guardians in their tireless work to protect this endangered species.