FRENCH LOVING

November 13, 2015. When Paris was struck by terrorist attacks, the world’s reaction exceeded anything France could imagine. It seemed the entire world was expressing solidarity in blue, white and red. Great monuments, like the Sydney Opera House, Christ the Redeemer in Rio, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the City Halls in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai and the new One World Trade Center in Manhattan were all lit with the colors of France. The whole earth, draped in a tricolor, seemed united in unprecedented emotion. And the French, accustomed to “French bashing,” finally discovered “French loving.”

It seemed as if all the negative French caricatures dominating the international discourse had been, in fact, hiding a deep-seated, protective love for a now-wounded France. A complex, paradoxical, but powerful love, woven over centuries, that needed a tragedy before it could be released into our global village. From Beijing to New York, Buenos Aires to Tokyo, this film plunges into the heart of a historical, political and cultural reality: the image of France through the eyes of the foreigners who love her.