ten documentaries to better understand the United States today

The Trump/Harris campaign, threatened abortion, relations with Europe… While Donald Trump has just won the presidential election, our selection of documentaries available online to grasp the multiple American realities.

“Donald Trump, the strategy of chaos”: investigation into a stunning drift

The magazine “Complément d’investigation” focuses on the pivotal period of November 2020 and January 2021, when the Republican candidate continued fake news, calling for insurrection while marching towards the Capitol.

Available on France.tv

“United States, democracy under siege”: a nation on the edge of the precipice?

In a very complete demonstration guided by Anna Telnaes, famous press cartoonist of the Washington Post and Pulitzer Prize winner who co-directed this documentary, this film returns to the sources of the Constitution, mother of all evils.

Available on Arte.tv

“Operation Trump: Russian spies conquering America”: is Donald Putin’s toy?

“We knew something about him. » In front of the camera, General Oleg Kalugin, former head of foreign intelligence of the KGB (1974-1990) exiled in the United States, will say no more. But that's already a lot: the confidence further supports the suspicions of compromise that have weighed on former President Donald Trump for almost a decade. The Kremlin has Trump: this is the conclusion of this investigation which traces the captivating story of Russian infiltration into American democracy.

Available on France.tv

“Kamala Harris, an American ambition”: the crazy rise of a heroine made in the USA

The first female vice-president of the United States forges her legend. We (re)discover thanks to this documentary how this daughter of an Indian mother, a civil rights activist, and a Jamaican father, an economics professor at Stanford, was able to build an image around her “family novel “. The investigation, however, is not content to simply retrace the rise of Kamala Harris but to tell the story behind the scenes, to reveal the strategies in the service of an assumed and displayed ambition.

Available on Arte.tv

“Abortion in the United States: the great divide”: the fight of citizens to help women

Since the Supreme Court's repeal of the federal right to abortion on June 24, 2022, Illinois has become a safe haven. The states surrounding it have banned or drastically restricted the right to abortion under the influence of powerful pro-life religious movements. In this liberal bastion, elected officials, doctors and volunteers are organizing to help women deprived of their fundamental rights. This is the frightening reality of these citizens who joined the resistance that documentary filmmakers Cyril Denvers and Sophie Przychodny wanted to highlight.

Available on France.tv

“United States-Europe, I love you neither”: a relationship in danger?

Could Donald Trump's victory plunge Europe and the world into chaos? What to do? Playing at scaring yourself, like on the 24-hour news channels that we only watch while taking anxiolytics? Magazine reporter C in the airthe documentary maker Romain Besnainou, who covered the beginnings of the conservative president's mandate in The Worrying Mr. Trump et Against and against Trumpreturned to the campaign in this long format, which is still as dense and well-executed.

Available on France.tv

“The 13th”: how segregation is eating away at the heart of America

Leaders of the free world, the United States? Denouncing the ambiguities of the 13th Amendment, pillar of the American Constitution, which abolishes servitude except — and precision is important — “for a crime of which the individual has been duly convicted”this chilling documentary by Ava DuVernay describes a society sick of its racism. The country appears there as the guard of the largest prison on the planet: record holder for the incarceration rate, it concentrates 25% of prisoners worldwide, including 40.2% blacks.

Available on Netflix

“America First. 1933-1944: the American Nazi temptation”: the documentary that shakes the memory

« America first. » Who remembers that Donald Trump's slogan historically refers to an American isolationist lobby, opposed to the participation of the United States in the Second World War? How did the country get to this level of penetration of Nazi ideology? Emmanuel Amara has undertaken, with this lucid film but devoid of political actors, what the United States refused to do after 1945: to face this past, marked by a minority but influential Nazism, “never served”.

Available on LCP

“USA: the war of books”: an attempt to erase racial minorities and LGBTQI+

« If you continue to impose your LGBT ideas on our children, your big ass communist pedophile will end up six feet under, bitch! » Librarian in a Louisiana school, Amanda Jones received this threat in 2022. Her crime: having denounced, during a public meeting, the censorship of books relating to marginalized populations (LGBTQI+, racial minorities, etc.). An enlightening – and maddening – dive into the crusade of conservative Christian activists against books on racial and sexual identity in the United States.

Available on Arte.tv

“Dreamers, a life in the shadows”: the painful life of children of migrants in the United States

Carlos, 38, is what we call in the United States a dreamer (a dreamer). Much less poetic than it seems, this term refers to the children of migrants who arrived illegally. “My country does not consider me one of its citizens », Carlos immediately poses, depressed. His parents moved from Mexico to Chicago when he was 9 years old. His portrait makes tangible the impact on three generations of a situation which concerns two and a half million people on American soil. Spontaneous sequences shot in the heart of his large family inject a little joy into this black and white film.

Available on Arte.tv