François Mitterrand, le roman du pouvoir - 1. Les Années d'apprentissage (1916-1958) - 2. Le Conquérant (1958-1981) - 3. Les Illusions perdues (1981-1988) - 4. Splendeur et Misère du pouvoir (1988-1995)

François Mitterrand dominated French political history of the past 30 years. The political destiny of François Mitterrand was exceptional – because of the longevity of his political career, which straddled two republics, the supreme power which he exercised for 14 years, the magisterium as the leader of the Left. Successively leader of Resistance organisation a year after leaving Vichy, minister at the age of 29, head of the anti-Gaullist opposition, reinventor of the Socialist Party, French president and creator of the European Union at Maastricht, he comes across as a character out of a novel who compartmentalised his life and career.
This four-part documentary attempts to patch together and intimate portrait from the innumerable pieces of the Mitterrandian puzzle, so as to bring out the individual as a man of power, "the serene patriarch and the condottiere". Posting multiple sources, the director sought to render motivations : a search for a personality in search of History. Far from inculcating whole truths, this inquiry points up contradictions and metamorphoses attempting in this way to fill the gap between the appearances of a life and its reality.