AT THE ORIGINS OF FRENCH VILLAGE CIVILIZATION

2025

In Production

LENGTH

90mn

Partners

France tv

Procirep-Angoa

CNC

Région Nouvelle Aquitaine

Métropole de Bordeaux

CNRS

DIRECTOR

Stéphane Jacques

 

AUTHORS

Stéphane Jacques

Maurice Ribière

Dans la peau des premiers paysans français (In the shoes of the first French farmers) takes us on an archaeological adventure in the footsteps of our earliest farming ancestors. 7,500 years ago, pioneers of agriculture came from the Near East, crossing seas and mountains to start a revolution in France: the revolution of animal husbandry and plant cultivation. Both adventurers and builders, they laid the first stones of villages. On our soil, they brought prehistory to an end.

 

The film retraces this epic founding story. Thanks to spectacular advances in paleogenetics, archaeology, and innovative visual reconstructions, the film brings these long-forgotten pioneers, both men and women, back to life. Who were they? What did they look like? How did they encounter the inhabitants of the territory, hunter-gatherers who had been there for millennia?


Bringing with them their own animals, their own seeds, and new knowledge, the first farmers sought to tame nature and passed on much more than techniques: a way of life that is still ours today.

 

Combining scientific research, vivid storytelling, and striking revelations, this documentary tells the prequel to our world today. It is an epic tale, as little known as it is moving, which changes our view of the origins of our society.