On October 4, 2018, France celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Fifth Republic. It is a republic born in the throes of the Algerian War and one which—from the day it was founded by General de Gaulle until the presidency of a very Jupiterian Emmanuel Macron—has been assailed as a “Republican monarchy” by partisans of a more assertive parliamentarian state. By revisiting the struggle of those who dared oppose the new regime — only to suffer a crushing defeat on September 28, 1958, when they were barely able to garner 20% of the vote against the constitutional text — this film shines a powerful new light on the origins of the Fifth Republic and its consequences for the next 60 years. It is a constitutional debate that planted the seeds for a complete upheaval of the French political landscape, on the left in particular, and set the country in motion toward what would be called the Union of the Left.
Philippe Saada
as Narrator (voice)
Pierre Pflimlin
as Self (archive footage)
Raoul Salan
as Self (archive footage)
Jacques Massu
as Self (archive footage)
Pierre Joxe
as Self
Jean-François Sirinelli
as Self
Charles de Gaulle
as Self (archive footage)
Pierre Mendès France
as Self (archive footage)
Charles Hernu
as Self (archive footage)
Édouard Daladier
as Self (archive footage)
Anicet Le Pors
as Self
François Mitterrand
as Self (archive footage)
