catalogue

Quants - The alchemists of Wall Street

What are the risks of treating the economy and its markets as a complex machine? Will we be able to keep control of this model-based financial system, or have we created a monster? Quants are the smart math wizards and computer programmers in the engine room of our global financial system who...

Quantum Tamers : revealing our weird & wired future (The)

From deep inside the sewers of Vienna to cutting-edge quantum computing labs to voyages into the minds of the world’s brightest thinkers, including the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, The Quantum Tamers: Revealing our Weird & Wired Future explores the coming quantum technological...

Quest for the Lost Pharaoh

The captivating story of one’s man pursuit and discovery of a new necropolis in Egypt’s South Saqqara, which will reveal the mysterious history of four pharaohs from the Old Kingdom, lost to history over 4.000 years ago. Archaeologist Vassil Dobrev attempts to resolve the mystery of their...

Radioactive waste, the nuclear nightmare

Waste is the nuclear industry's Achilles heel – and its worst nightmare. Populations are afraid of it and scientists still have not found a satisfactory way of dealing with it. Meanwhile, the heads of the industry try to reassure us and politicians avoid the issue. What exactly do we know about...

Ramses II, the Great Journey

More than 3200 years ago…. Under the reign of Ramesses the Second, pharaoh of the New Empire’s 19th dynasty, Egypt is living the final hours of its golden age. After a prestigious reign of 67 years, the powerful pharaoh dies at the exceptional age of 92. He becomes for all time the legendary...

Rats, the islands' pirates

At the heart of an ambitious research programme on different islands of the globe, researchers are trying to understand the secrets of the incredible expansion of the black rat Rattus rattus. They study the threats posed by this small rodent on 80% of the islands of the world. Indeed, this animal...

Regenesis

This series of detective fiction stages the scientists NorBAC, fictional investigative biotechnology institute based in Toronto and the territories involved Canadian, American and mexiacain. These experts track down all kinds of viruses, genetic engineering and all forms of bio-terrorism.

Researchers of History

On the occasion of the centenary of the French School of the Far East, this film traces the activity of four scientists in China, Japan and Cambodia stressing their role in the conservation of South-East Asia’s heritage.

Revolution in the Reef

How can one make the the world aware of the need to protect an ecosystem? Coral reefs are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet – and continuously get severely damaged by climate change, natural disasters and human beings. By declaring the Great Barrier Reef a National Park with...

Ringed planet (The)

Saturn. Girdled by its mighty rings, this is the most instantly recognizable yet least understood of the planets. Now, after a seven-year journey through the solar system, the Cassini spacecraft has finally arrived for what should prove to be an unforgettable four year orbital mission: “For...

Risk for legacy

The tremendous hopes that have been put in genetic research are not only scientific, they are also for a large part economic. Therefore, a business vs. science conflict around genes was unavoidable. For Europe, it begun in January 2001.The European Patent Office recorded the patent of Myriad...

River Travellers

Explorer Stéphane Lévin is the instigator of Science travellers, a unique series of three scientific expeditions conceived for high-school pupils. The film retraces the extraordinary experience of six young adventurers during the last expedition in French Guiana. Their goal: to gain insights...

Sailing the north pole

This programme is a documentary about the expedition of Sebastien Roubinet et Rodolphe André who have decided to cross the Arctic Ocean from Alaska to the Norwegian islands of Spitsbergen, via the geographic North Pole! For this, Sébastien Roubinet has invented a strange little boat...

Saved by the Seals?

Can seals be used as barometers for our climate? On a beach of the lost islands of Kerguelen, sleeps a seal. She is going to supply vital new information about how our planet functions, and about global warming. Christophe Guinet, a French scientist, is going to catch and equip her with...

Science Gangsters

Three major frauds have shaken the scientific community for decades and have marked this century in an exemplary fashion in various fields: psychology, genetics and prehistory. If all these frauds have found their dupe, this is because in general they were in line with the prejudices of the...

Science goes to the Beach

The film takes viewers to a pleasant day at the beach, then asks them to squat down, take a closer look, and let themselves get drawn into the tiny world of seashore creatures. Sea urchins, small jellyfish, starfish, cuttlefish, shellfish, shrimp and more: you can stumble upon these animals any...

Science of fasting

While life expectancy is increasing in Western countries, cases of diabetes, hypertension, obesity and cancer are increasing, and the use of medication has exploded. Does this mean that to live to a ripe age we are condemned to swallow more and more drugs? What if there was another way? For half...

Sciences in consciousness, the ethical reflection

The history of science is marked out by drift against which societies wanted to protect themselves. Born after Nuremberg and Hiroshima, the bioethics defines itself as reflection on the possible limits to be put to applications of the research in the domains of the biology, the medicine and the...

Sea Rex

Sea Rex immerses audiences in a wondrous adventure from the dinosaur age. In the company of Julie, an imaginative young woman, and a mysterious scientist from the past (Georges Cuvier), viewers will magically travel from a modern-day aquarium to the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. They...

Secrets of the Parthenon

Though revered as a symbol of beauty and perfection, for 25 centuries the Parthenon has been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes and explosions, looted for its sculptures, and disfigured by catastrophic renovations. Now, to save it from collapse, the modern restoration team must uncover the...

See for yourself

Visual impairment of very different forms (blindness, low vision from birth, following an accident or illness) is often poorly understood by the population. There are almost 100.000 visual impaired in France today and almost 1 million and a half of low vision person. Like other handicaped, the...

Seeking the Current

Nicolas Boisclair and Alexis de Gheldere canoe the entire 500 km course of the pristine Romaine River before Hydro-Québec begins construction of four hydroelectric plants. In parallel, accompanied by Roy Dupuis, one of the most renown Canadian actor, they explore the various renewable green...

Seine estuary, at the bedside... (The)

Because it gathers the conditions and environments of great biological wealth, the estuary of the Seine is a must for wildlife. However, the river was largely built in defiance of this delicate balance, and emissions from industrial or agricultural activities threaten this already highly degraded...

Sentinel Animals

Certain animal species possess surprising physiological faculties in front of pollutions or in the announcement of an imminent natural disaster. Their instinct or their physiology, their nearness with the nature, make the best allies of the man in the prevention of natural and industrial risks...

Shale Gas Rush (The)

A fad? No, a rush, everywhere in North America and the province of Quebec is among the targets. There might be important reserves of natural gas in the Saint-Lawrence Lowlands of Quebec in Canada. The energetic and economic potential might be considerable. But to extract this gas, one must...

Shaman, his nephew... and the captain (The)

Palawan Island in the Philippines: Medsinu succeeds his father as shaman, in a community living in the forest and pressured by the modern world. His nephew Issad falls ill and can no longer work the land, so he joins the militia of the local "captain". But he has to choose whether or not to obey...

Shapes of the Invisible: crab (The)

Amazing dive into te heart of the matter thanks to an original visual principle: a regular, fluid forward zoom, beginning with the subject as seen by the nacked eye, then exploring its texture or its composition, with images provided by ever more powerful microscopes.

Shapes of the Invisible: steel

Shark sex

It is part of the lives of sharks that had never been observed: the reproduction. Two young French researchers will hold an experience unique in the world : following female sandbar shark by acoustic telemetry. They chose the perfect place for it, Rangiroa Atoll (French Polynesia), in the...

Silent Snow

Film screened in French at the festival The Arctic plains are an eminent example of nature’s untouched beauty: an endless nothing in which only few know how to survive. But dangerous pesticides are silently accumulating here, poisoning its inhabitants. A young Inuit woman investigates the...

Sister's voices (My)

How does one live with schizophrenia ? How does one talk about it ? How would someone affected by the condition deal with medical professionals, with their family and with everyone else ? « The voices of my sister » is both a portrait and a personal account of living with the condition. The film...

Skin Deep

We live in a world of "black" and "white". For hundreds of years, human skin colour has been used as a marker of race. Now, science is uncovering the intricate relationship between skin colour and environment to reveal its crucial role in survival and reproduction. Skin colour tells a...

Sleepiness. When your brain has a mind of its own

Sometimes comical but often tragic, Sleepiness takes an important part in our lives. First cause of leathal highway accidents, drowsiness invites itself in our work. What happens with our brain? Can we master sleepiness? By working on the sleep and especially on the functioning of awakening,...

Small is beautiful

The intense industrialisation of agricultural production has led to the desertification of the countryside, the confiscation of crops and the starvation of millions of people around the world. It has poisoned our water and our soil, it has rendered entire lands sterile. How and why did this...

Something about Species

Do you know that you are an Amniote like the golden eagle, a tetrapod like the rattlesnake with its four limbs for walking? But hold on, a rattlesnake on four legs? From the point of view of evolution, yes indeed! One fine day, the common ancestor of the snakes discovered the knack of slithering...

Spell of Poincaré Conjecture (the)

What is the shape of our universe? The Poincaré Conjecture, formulated in 1904 by French mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincaré, promised to shed light on that question. Yet it remained unproved for a century, as scores of mathematicians tried and failed to establish a full proof, though...

Sperm Whale, dealing with the unexpected

From the stormy surface to the eternal darkness of the abyss, several generations of these deep-sea divers encounter men and their “toys”: harpoons of yesterday, and fishing lines of today. Once victim of whale hunting, now accused of stealing fish, a sperm whale shares its private life with...

Spring under Surveillance

In this very beginning of the XXIst century we are exploring the remotest parts of the universe, yet do we really know our most familiar environment? What are seasons for instance? Nothing seems more familiar than the return of spring or the arrival of winter. But what precisely controls living...

Sputnik years - Space Pirates

Only few people know the story of these pioneers of space communications, the brothers Achille and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordiglia. In the early 1960s, these amateurs and tinkerers of genius successfully pick up signals from the first top secret Russian and US space missions. Back on this...

Squatters

Insects and parasites are certainly the most amazing and ubiquitous creatures on Earth. Some are attractive, others repugnant, but all have a more or less direct and immediate impact on our existence. Useful or pests, conquering or timid, dangerous or inoffensive, they meet mankind on all...

Stars and men

On the occasion of the World Year of Astronomy in 2009, this documentary offers to enter the wings of one of the biggest European Services of Astrophysics ( the SAp) and to discover, behind research, those who are in charge of it.

Stone age artists - the magdalenian masters

The inception of art in prehistoric times is a much debated issue. Some believe it coincides with a revolution of the mind, which is thought to have started about 40,000 years ago, others think it is the result of a gradual evolution that began with the very first human beings, some two millions...

Stone Age Atlantis

We believed for a long time that the Stone Age (8,000 to 10,000 years ago), especially the Mesolithic was a period of time when man was limited to the state of hunter-gatherer in the harsh conditions of the era ice. New discoveries reveal that this was a much more successful period, where man...

Storm over China

On a front of more than 150 km, the monsoon winter afflict China. The climate change has accelerated this phenomenon to the point that a "green wall" of trees over 4000 m² seems to be the only solution to stop the sand. This worsening of climatic changes is added to an extraordinary...

Stradivarius Mystery (The)

What makes the famous violins of Antonio Stradivari so valuable and sought after? Of ancient string instruments from Cremona in clinical laboratory environments through the warmth of concert halls, acousticians, chemists, instrument makers, musicians or even climate scientists are all passionate...

Stranded

Survival... Why? How? One of the greatest survival stories of all time is finally told by the survivors themselves, brilliantly crafted by their childhood friend and master filmmaker, Gonzalo Arijon. If this is a story that you think you know, think again. In October 1972, a rugby team from...

Sun on Earth

As reserves of fossil fuels on the planet are almost exhausted, our energy consumption is increasing. Renewable energies alone will not suffice to cover our needs. We only know the dark side of nuclear energy, often associated with fission and its dangers, but beyond political boundaries,...

Super Jellyfish

Jellyfish are incredible animals. Deprived of a head, heart and brain, and composed of 95% of water, they are able to change their identity, regenerate their body or produce some light. Some of them even became immortal...

Super spider

They are said to be poisonous, evil, hairy and treacherous. Whether from their physical appearance or their behaviour, spiders suffer a bad reputation. We know little of their habits and we often fear them. And yet the spider is a creature of many powers and an endless source of amazement. With...

Super Worm

Worms are everywhere: in the ground, in the oceans, in the ice of Alaska and even within us ! Thanks to worms, genetics could decipher our genome...