Irak : la guerre à tout prix

March 20th, 2003: the first bomb falls on Baghdad. The second Gulf War is underway. Iraq has become the new theatre of confrontation, in a battle that pits soldier against soldier. But before the decision to go to war, before these images were broadcast the world over, the conflict came to boil elsewhere. The muffled halls of the United Nations Security Council and embassy conference rooms were the first real battlefields. The "combatants" were political leaders and diplomats.
From August 2002 to March 2003, the prospect of a new war in Iraq sparked an unprecedented diplomatic crisis that would divide the West’s great powers. France, Germany and Russia lined up on one side, and the United States and Great Britain on the other. The two camps built alliances and squared off in a modern-day version of The Trojan War Shall Not Take Place.
Jean-Christophe Rosé and Patrick Jarreau (Washington Bureau Chief for Le Monde) returned to the sites where this first battle played out for Roche Productions (the production company that brought viewers " CIA: Secret Wars" by William Karel), and interviewed its main players. One year later, they tell the behind-the-scenes story and unveil the mysteries of international diplomacy: deals, official and unofficial meetings, reasoning and computations, phone calls, and low blows. This manoeuvring serves as the framework of the documentary, put together like a high-suspense play with its unique brand of staging, unity of place and action, biting quips, and memorable speeches. Stock footage - some never before seen - is mixed with accounts by no less than 15 direct witnesses. Foreign affairs ministers (Dominique de Villepin, Colin Powell, Jack Straw, Joschka Fischer), American hawks and advisors (Richard Perle, Richard Haass), ambassadors to Washington and the UN (Sir Christopher Meyer, Jean-David Levitte, etc.), and weapons inspectors (Hans Blix) all give their version of events, sharing revealing anecdotes and lending insight into the dramatic stakes.