It’s a unique exercise: retracing the night of June 5, 1944, as if we were there. A 75-minute broadcast, with an educational vocation, to tell the story with the information available at the time, with the strictest historical respect and with images restored and recolored using artificial intelligence. Wednesday June 5 at 11 p.m. on France 2.
Let’s imagine… What if news channels had existed on the night of June 5, 1944? As the Allies prepare to land on the French coast, the France Télévisions editorial team is mobilizing to bring you this event. In this special edition, presented by Julian Bugier, we will find our special correspondents throughout France, alongside the allied forces but also the Resistance. With Agnès Vahramian from one of the Landing barges, Maryse Burgot in Sainte-Mère-Eglise, Marc de Chalvron in Saint-Lô, Luc Lacroix at the Abbaye des Dames in Caen, Stéphanie Perez in the maquis of Saint-Marcel and the team from the France 2 Lyon office in Collonges with Marshal Pétain. And Dorothée Olliéric, in London where Winston Churchill is holed up in the War Room.
With our correspondents abroad, we will also be live from London, with Ambroise Bouleis, in Berlin with Thibaud de Barbeyrac, in Rome with Raphaële Schapira but also in Washington with Camille Guttin and in Moscow with Anne Ponsinet.
On stage will be our French and foreign policy editorialists – Nathalie Saint-Cricq and Étienne Leenhardt –, two military experts – Marc Laurenceau and Rémi Olry –, as well as the historian Fabrice d’Almeida. We will also provide regular updates on the state of the forces present with Nicolas Châteauneuf, as well as updates on the weather on the night of June 5, 1944 with Anaïs Baydemir.
The “Longest Night” or how to tell the story differently with the journalistic codes and means of our time…
