Louise Bernard with Alexis Patri 10:41 am, October 05, 2021

France 2 is broadcasting this Tuesday evening a major documentary: "France, a fabulous trip".

It took no less than three years of work and the involvement of 300 people to immerse viewers in what France was a long time ago.

And a very long time even: two billion years ago.

INTERVIEW

"Our history since the dawn of time".

This is the promise made by France 2 this evening with the documentary 

France, a fabulous journey

.

This very ambitious project took three years of work.

300 people worked directly or indirectly on this film, notably with large technical and scientific teams.

Because the documentary is about the history of France, but its geological history.

It tries to understand what our regions looked like millions and millions of years ago, and even goes back two billion years in the past.

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At that time, there was a huge mountain range 8,000 meters above sea level in Brittany and Paris was a region of lagoons with warm waters.

"A dreamlike tale, not a geology lesson"

France, a fabulous trip 

is the fruit of the work between director Michaël Pitiot and geologist Arnaud Guérin.

Together they manage to make accessible this area, apparently not very general public, of geology.

"This film is built like a tale, the narrator takes us into his world", explains director Michaël Pitiot.

“This is not a geology course. We are in much more poetic and dreamlike terrain. We had to poetize the compression, the erosion, the carboniferous forest that covered France.

To represent France as it was millions of years ago, there is no question of 3D reconstructions.

Michaël Pitiot used a technique of superimposing images, those of our French regions with those of other countries where today we find rocks or landscapes equivalent to those of France from millions of years ago. years.

For a mountain that has become Mont-Saint-Michel, the teams went to shoot in Iceland.

For Brittany, they went to New Zealand, for Paris in Australia, etc. 

"We will not find another planet Earth"

The result, with its many aerial views, is spectacular: an ode to the Earth desired by director Michaël Pitiot.

“Everything that surrounds us, without exception, has a magical and poetic history,” he believes.

“There is something sublime about the genesis of the planet, each plant, each small form of life has its magic. There is a pleasure in reconnecting with nature. This is what is at the origin of the project of this film . We have an incredible chance to inhabit this planet. We will not find another planet Earth. "

Michaël Pitiot had already shot several films with Yann Arthus Bertrand.

The documentary

France, a fabulous journey

 is broadcast Tuesday evening at 9:05 pm on France 2. It is followed by a making-of of the film which reveals all the manufacturing secrets.