La ligne rouge

I have been working on The Red line for more than 5 years. After a lot of adventures and difficulties the editing is finally ready and I need your help to finish the movie. A few words about myself Hi everyone and thanks a lot for reading this ! For those who may not know me, I am Grégoire, I am 28 and I’ve been working in the audiovisual industry for 9 years (documentary production at the beginning and animation now). After writing and directing a few shorts, I started working on historical and geopolitical documentaries. I wrote The Red line in 2018 and I quickly received interest from a production company. However, only small broadcasters were ready to buy the movie so the producers dropped the project. But it was so important for me that I decided to produce it on my own, without money but surrounded by friends who helped me to get there. Because of Covid, it has been a longer path than expected but today, thanks to all of you, this movie will be completed soon ! The documentary The synopsis: In 2013, while the Syria war rages for 2 years, Bachar el-Assad orders his army to bomb the suburbs of Damas with chemical weapons. 2000 people, including many children, die on this day. For the Western countries, the use of chemical weapons was a red line, drawn by Barack Obama in 2012. However, despite martial speeches and military escalation threats in France, United-States and United Kingdom, there will be no military intervention. This 52-minute film looks back on these ten days which could have changed the course of the war and which had a lasting effect on the credibility of the Western nations. The speakers : For this movie I had the chance to interview geopolitical specialists as well as direct actors of the crisis. Jean-Marc Ayrault, former French Prime Minister, General Mercier, former chief of French Airforce and Philip Gordon, Obama's Middle East advisor from 2009 to 2013 accepted to answer my questions. On the specialist side, Bernard Guetta (journalist and European deputy), Pierre Servent (journalist, author of Presidents and war), and Bruno Tertrais (president of the Foundation for Strategic Research) also agreed to participate. The archives: In addition to the interviews I also used archives, mostly from the INA (French national institute of audiovisual). I have chosen to integrate News footage from TF1 and France 2 to show that, even though the crisis is unknown, it came daily into our home thanks to television. These archives are not just there to illustrate what the speakers say, as I kept the original journalistic comment to enhance the feeling of following events day to day on TV. What are the next steps? The interviews have been shot and the editing, thanks to Jean Garrier, is now finished. We still need to conform the archives (i.e. replace the low definition images downloaded from the INA website with HD images purchased from them), to mix and to do the color grading. What life for the movie ? The Red line will be sent to festivals dedicated to History and politics all over the world with the hope of finding channels interested in it.