“Presidents, the price to pay – Facing the street”, behind the scenes of power

While on April 14, Emmanuel Macron promulgated the law on pension reform, a few hours after the validation of the wise men of the Constitutional Council, thus trying to close a turbulent political sequence, this documentary comes at the right time. In this first episode of a collection of films devoted to French heads of state in the face of adversity, veterans Michèle Cotta (85) and Patrice Duhamel (77) look back on the major crises, from May-68 to the demonstrations “yellow vests”, which marked out the Fifth Republic. They give a voice to those who, within the government, have experienced them most closely. François Hollande, Alain Juppé, Nicolas Sarkozy, Edouard Balladur, Jean-Pierre Raffarin… The distribution is prestigious.

“A form of educational lesson”

And beyond the fine political analysis delivered by these leading actors, one of the main qualities of this documentary is to take us behind the scenes of power. Thus, Edouard Balladur remembers these two hours of May 29, 1968 (he was then a young adviser to Prime Minister Georges Pompidou) during which President de Gaulle disappeared and the panic that gripped the government. François Hollande returns to the Savary bill, which aimed to integrate private schools into a large public service and brought more than a million demonstrators to the streets on June 24, 1984. Mitterrand, unconvinced by this reform , nevertheless let his socialist allies go straight into the wall, before withdrawing the text, “a form of educational lesson”. Costly lesson since it will lead to the resignation of the Minister of National Education, Alain Savary, and that of the Prime Minister, Pierre Mauroy.

Sometimes, over the many archive images, the political decryption fades and gives way to more personal memories, as when Alain Juppé, evoking his plan to reform Social Security and special pension schemes, which put the France stopped in December 1995, recognizes that to see his effigy burning throughout the demonstrations, “It jostles, it worries, it even worries sometimes…”.

Saturday April 29 at 9 p.m. on Public Sénat. Documentary by Michèle Cotta and Patrice Duhamel (2023). 52 mins. (Available in replay on the site of Public Senate).