SBS Documentaries

Cairo, March 2017 - construction workers make a spectacular discovery beneath metres of rubble. At the bottom of a deep pit, buried in mud and debris, lies an enormous crowned stone head. Nearby the torso and plinth. These are the remains of a colossal quartzite statue, 9 metres high and weighing several tons. It’s an archaeological sensation, a clear indication that this was once the heart of an ancient, legendary metropolis - Heliopolis.

While travelling through Bangladesh, from the Southern Bengal’s bay to the 'Chars' - those Northern precarious Islands, through Dacca or Chittagong - the largest Graveyard in the world, the film features the country’s crucial fight against climate change and its destiny hanging by a thread.

Could Australia ever have been French? The English certainly thought so. Through revolution, empire and restoration, late 18th and early 19th century France maintained an unwavering commitment to research and discovery in the Pacific region and in Australia. More interested in science than in new colonies, these early French voyages, led by commanders like Bougainville, Lapérouse, D’Entrecasteaux, Baudin, Freycinet, Duperrey and Dumont d’Urville, were the first to name, describe and beautifully illustrate many Australian species. England may have colonised Australia, but for many years it was France that understood it best. This richly illustrated short documentary film brings to life our fascinating and colourful French history and reminds us of a time when scientific research involved intrepid voyages in tall ships on the high seas, battling scurvy and storms, insects and rats, and hostilities both on board and on shore.

Travel through contemporary France and turn back the clock to discover an extraordinary past. An unsuspected legacy is suddenly revealed - how did a simple lagoon make it possible for journeymen to build the Chambord castle, why wouldn’t Champagne exist were it not for an immense, prehistoric ocean, how is the fate of coal miners intimately tied to a strange, subterranean jungle? A marvelous tale, somewhere between dream and reality, offering an alternative history of France that takes an off-beaten trail into the dawn of time.