Revisited

Hollywood, a name synonymous with cinema, is seeing its stars fade. Much more than a mythical place, it's a global industry that generates revenue in the billions making it one of the biggest contributors to California's economy. Battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes, and devastating wildfires, the film industry is struggling to catch its breath. The box office is plummeting, and studios are relocating for lower production costs — be it in the United States or abroad. Is Hollywood at the dawn of a revival or at the end of its reign? Valérie Defert and Pierrick Leurent explore the challenges facing the movie capital of the world.

It's been 50 years since the fall of Saigon, a day that marked the end of a long and brutal chapter in Vietnam's history. In the years that followed, Ho Chi Minh City rose from the ashes of war, reinventing itself as a bustling metropolis. Yet, beneath the modern skyline and the hum of economic growth, the memories of April 30, 1975, continue to echo. William de Tamaris takes us back to that pivotal moment and explores how a city shaped by conflict now faces the future, while still carrying the weight of its past.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Nepal on April 25, 2015, killing nearly 9,000 people as it destroyed homes and heritage sites across the country. The quake also triggered avalanches on Mount Everest that claimed the lives of 22 hikers. A decade later, the nation is still rebuilding, with fresh solutions to protect lives in the event of future quakes. FRANCE 24's Navodita Kumari and Nabeel Ahmed report.

Five decades after the start of Lebanon's civil war, veterans of the conflict are speaking out about their past role in the country's warring militias and how they broke with their respective parties. With the threat of war ever present, they worry that young Lebanese – who do not learn the history of the conflict at school – will fall into the spiral of violence like they did. Our reporters Sophie Guignon and Chloé Domat went to meet them.

On June 24, 2022, an attempt by mostly Sudanese migrants to force their way into Europe led to dozens of them being killed in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the border with Morocco. Nearly three years on, attempts to find out exactly what happened that fateful day have been thwarted. Meanwhile, migration routes to Europe have been redrawn as a result of the tragedy. Our correspondents investigate.

In May 2017, a Catholic Mission in Bangassou in the Central African Republic became a symbol of resistance. Priests formed a human chain to defend Muslims from a massacre by Christian majority anti-balaka militants. The priests sheltered the persecuted Muslim community for four years. Caroline Dumay and Stefan Carstens report on the current state of reconciliation in Bangassou, in a country where some 15 armed groups are still active.

Thirty-five years after the horrors of the Ceaușescu dictatorship were discovered in Romania, our reporters investigated one of the darkest episodes in the country's history – the squalid, state-run institutions where thousands of children were locked away and abused. An estimated 15,000 children died, mostly in so-called hospitals for those often misdiagnosed as severely disabled. While part of society is nostalgic for the Communist era, the work of collective memory and justice is far from complete.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of students took to the streets of the Thai capital Bangkok, leading to huge demonstrations and an unprecedented protest movement in the “land of smiles”. These young Thais defied the biggest taboo in the kingdom by calling for a reform of the monarchy. Five years on, some of the protesters are still fighting for more democracy. Others, disheartened by the severe crackdown, have lost hope of changing their country's politics.

During World War II, the Japanese imperial authorities abducted, coerced, tricked and sometimes recruited hundreds of thousands of women from Japan's colonial empire to become sexual slaves for soldiers. Sometimes minors, these women were called "comfort women" and were raped repeatedly in brothels near the front lines. With only a handful of survivors still alive in China, our reporters met one of them: 95-year-old Peng Zhuying. She is determined to share her story in a country where the subject remains taboo.

Four years after the deadly assault on the US Capitol, two opposing narratives persist about what took place that fateful day. More than 1,500 people have since been criminally indicted in federal court, but President-elect Donald Trump has promised to pardon them all on his first day in office. Our correspondent Fanny Allard met a convicted rioter, a policeman who was injured on January 6, 2021 and a member of the bipartisan committee tasked with investigating the attack.

Twenty years after the devastating tsunami that hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the province of Aceh has returned to peace after a civil war and is now living under Koranic law. Our correspondent reports.

For nearly five years, our reporters have followed "the project of the century" – the reconstruction of Paris's Notre-Dame Cathedral, which was devastated by fire in April 2019. In this final episode, we take you across France to discover the craftsmanship that has helped bring the Gothic masterpiece back to life. The world's most famous cathedral is set to reopen to the public on December 8. FRANCE 24's Mélina Huet reports.

The Lebensborn programme, meaning spring or source of life, was one of the most secret and incredible projects of the regime in Nazi Germany. Its aim was to give birth to children who were seen as "perfect" in the eyes of the Nazis. These so-called Aryans – tall, blond and blue-eyed – were representatives of the "master race" that Adolf Hitler dreamed of. Our correspondent Anne Mailliet investigated this terrifying project and tracked down victims who are today more than 80 years old.

During the 2020 US presidential election, Arizona emerged as a pivotal state. Joe Biden won a narrow victory there, marking one of the rare occasions when this traditionally Republican state swung to the Democrats. In the aftermath of the election, while Donald Trump continued to claim victory, Arizona Republicans and the candidate's lawyers attempted to have the vote annulled in court – citing fraud and irregularities – but all these legal challenges were dismissed by the courts. Four years later, the state of Arizona remains more decisive than ever. Our reporters Valérie Defert and Pierrick Leurent followed the particularly tense campaign in Phoenix.

Forty years after his death, Ahmed Sékou Touré, the father of Guinea's independence, is more popular than ever. For young people across West Africa in search of a hero, Sékou Touré could be what they're looking for. But this rehabilitation of the country's past dictator glosses over the tens of thousands of deaths attributed to his regime, with access to the notorious Camp Boiro concentration camp now closed to victims' families. Our correspondent Sarah Sakho reports.

It's the biggest mystery and probably the biggest scandal to hit Mexico in the past decade. On September 26, 2014, in the southern town of Iguala, police officers fired on several buses carrying students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College. In the ensuing chaos, six people including three students were killed, while 43 other trainee teachers were taken away by the police, allegedly in cahoots with a local cartel. They were never seen alive again. Ten years on, the Mexican government and judicial system are unable to explain the tragedy. Our reporters Laurence Cuvillier, Matthieu Comin and Quentin Duval look back at this strange disappearance.

Dotting East Africa's Swahili coast, Zanzibar, Lamu and Mombasa are synonymous with pristine waters and white sandy beaches. But many tourists are unaware that these UNESCO World Heritage Sites were the scene of a gruesome chapter in history. For centuries, the Swahili coast was central to the slave trade. 

The first flashpoint of Russia's hybrid war in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, and one of the first Ukrainian cities to be occupied and then liberated back in 2014, Sloviansk today finds itself once again under threat from the Kremlin's armies.

In Japan, they are known as "children of mixed blood": those born after 1945 to an American GI and a Japanese woman and abandoned due to stigma. Eighty years after the end of World War II, we went to meet some of these orphans to understand more about their painful past.

Twenty-two years ago, the Indian state of Gujarat erupted in violence. For several weeks from the end of February 2002, inter-communal violence led to the deaths of around 2,000 people, most of them Muslims. Entire neighbourhoods were burnt down and families massacred. This outpouring of hatred was sparked by a fire on a train on February 27, 2002 at Godhra station. Fifty-nine Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive and dozens of others seriously injured. Hindu fundamentalist organisations in the region immediately accused Muslim extremists of attacking the convoy. It was the start of the worst religious riots in India since independence in 1947. Two decades later, our team returned to Gujarat, which is still scarred by the tragedy.

The events of April 25, 1974 have left an indelible mark on the history of Portugal and Europe. That evening, a group of 200 left-leaning young Portuguese military captains walked out of their barracks and occupied strategic locations. Tired of the ravages of the dictatorship and colonisation, they won the active support of the people. The uprising was nicknamed the Carnation Revolution after the flowers that protesters placed in the soldiers' guns and tanks, in a rare example of a military coup being staged to install democracy. The dictatorship collapsed in a single day. But 50 years on, Portugal's old demons are surfacing. Chega, a populist xenophobic party, quadrupled its number of MPs in March's elections. In less than five years, it has become the country's third-largest political force. FRANCE 24's Céline Schmitt and Clara Le Nagard report, with Sarah Morris.

Six decades after the military coup that plunged Brazil into 21 years of dictatorship, the country is still struggling with its old demons. FRANCE 24's team went to meet deeply divided Brazilians – Bolsonaro supporters who are nostalgic for the dictatorship and survivors and left-wingers who want to make sure that this dark period of history is not forgotten.

The Croatian city of Vukovar, on the banks of the Danube, has a painful past. Located on the border with Serbia, it was the scene of the first major battle in the 1990s Balkan wars. Four years before the genocide in Srebrenica and eight years before the war in Kosovo, Vukovar was the first city in the former Yugoslavia to suffer ethnic cleansing, in 1991. More than 30 years later, reconciliation between local Serbs and Croats is hindered by impunity for war crimes and the inability to agree on a common version of events. 

Fifty-three years ago, Bangladesh finally obtained independence from Pakistan, at the cost of a war that left nearly 3 million people dead. Since then, the nation has developed into one of Asia's most dynamic economies, thanks in particular to the textile industry. The garment industry brings in more than $55 billion a year, making Bangladesh the world's second-largest clothing exporter, just behind China. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at the Bangladesh of today, a country that has fully embraced globalisation.

The Jordanian city of Zarqa has a strong Palestinian identity, with good reason. In 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel – what the Palestinians call the "Nakba" ("catastrophe") – some 750,000 people, or more than 80 percent of the Palestinian population, were forced to take exile in neighbouring countries as they fled the violence. Jordan took in around 100,000 of them, with many of these refugees settling in Zarqa, a desert area on the outskirts of the capital Amman. Seventy-five years after their exile, what relationship do they have with their homeland and with their host country of Jordan?

It was one of Spain's deadliest terrorist attacks in history. On the morning of March 11, 2004, ten bombs exploded almost simultaneously at the Atocha train station in the Spanish capital Madrid. Nearly 200 people were killed and more than 1,500 wounded. Twenty years later, survivors of the incident are still waiting to know the truth behind the bombings.

A century ago, the "manufacture, sale or transportation, importation or exportation" of alcohol was strictly forbidden across the United States, a policy that left an indelible mark. Nine decades after the end of the Prohibition era, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, some states and towns in the United States still remain "alcohol-free". Our correspondent Fanny Allard reports.

In the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, one road symbolises the complex relationship between Lebanon and neighbouring Syria: the aptly named Syria Street. With the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, Tripoli street also become a conflict zone. On one side, the Alawite district sided with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Sunni neighbourhood on the other side supported the rebels. For several years, the street was transformed into a battlefield. Young Lebanese living in Tripoli fought each other, ready to die for a cause that was not their own. Today, calm has returned to the street and communities that were once divided are learning to live together again.

An historic trial opened on January 8 for the West African nation of The Gambia. Ousman Sonko, a former high-ranking member of the dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh, is in the dock in Switzerland for a series of alleged crimes against humanity committed between 2000 and 2016. Victims of the dictatorship have high hopes for the trial. FRANCE 24's Sarah Sakho and Simon Martin report.

As Taiwan heads to the polls for a presidential election on January 13, we look back at a dark chapter in the island's past. Almost 80 years ago, on February 28, 1947, tens of thousands of Taiwanese who had risen up against the government were murdered. It was the start of the "White Terror" period. For 40 years, the Taiwanese were deprived of their freedoms, wrongly imprisoned or even executed. In 1987, with the lifting of martial law, Taiwan began its march towards democracy, and three decades later a Transitional Justice Commission was set up to work towards reconciliation. Our correspondent Lucie Barbazanges reports on a past that continues to haunt the Taiwanese people.

Between 1952 and 1960 in Kenya, the Mau Mau rebels who rose up against British rule faced a brutal crackdown that killed thousands of them. Left out of the history books for decades, these independence heroes are now fighting for recognition before the last survivors die out. Our correspondents report.

Thousands of Silicon Valley employees have been laid off over the past year, often finding out the bad news by email. Hit hard by rampant inflation and over-hiring during the Covid pandemic, the US tech giants of the San Francisco Bay Area have faced one of the worst crises in their history. A few months ago, a banking crisis added to their woes, when Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt, before being rescued by the federal government at the last minute. Nevertheless, the tech sector – renowned for its resilience – is refusing to give in to defeatism, as our team reports.

The city of Raqqa symbolises the tragic fate of Syria over the past 12 years. From the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, the northern city was a major target for rebel groups. It then became the stronghold of Islamic State group terrorists, who made Raqqa the capital of their self-proclaimed caliphate. The city went through three years of hell – suffering atrocities, public hangings and slave auctions – before being bombed and then liberated in 2017 by an international US-led coalition. Since then, the "Pearl of the Euphrates" has struggled to get back on track.

Some Argentinians carry a heavy family secret. Under the country's military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, their fathers were police or military officers. As such, they were responsible for the disappearance of up to 30,000 people, according to human rights groups. These men have since been accused – and sometimes convicted – of crimes against humanity. After decades of living in shame and silence, some of their now grown-up children have decided to make their voices heard and recount their terrible family legacy. They call themselves "the children of those who committed genocide".

In this edition of Revisited we head to Canada to discover the diversity of the country's French accents and cultures as the use of French in the mainly English-speaking country declines. From Port Royal in Nova Scotia to Toronto via New Brunswick and Quebec, what remains of the 18th-century colony of New France? Our correspondent reports.

As record numbers of migrants continue to arrive on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, FRANCE 24 looks back at the shipwreck of 2013, which saw 368 people drown off the island. Our reporters met a witness to the tragedy, a survivor and the island's doctor who registered the deaths. All of them want to put an end to these shipwrecks, which have made the Mediterranean the deadliest migrant route in the world.

It has been 50 years since Chile's military junta came to power. On September 11, 1973, the army headed by General Augusto Pinochet launched a coup with the US' covert backing. Soldiers took over the presidential palace, ousting leftist President Salvador Allende, who committed suicide. Pinochet then stayed in power for 17 years, a period of dictatorship that saw more than 3,000 people killed or missing and around 200,000 fleeing into exile. Even today, the constitution that was tailor-made for him in 1980 is still in force, although there are lively debates about amending it. FRANCE 24's Juliette Chaignon and Guillaume Gosalbes report.

During the Cold War, the US military conducted manoeuvres in Spain's Andalusia region. On January 17, 1966, a bomber and a supply plane collided in mid-air. From the belly of the bomber, four thermonuclear bombs fell to the ground. There was no nuclear explosion, as luckily they were unarmed. But they scattered highly radioactive plutonium over 250 hectares around the sleepy farming village of Palomares. The US tried to downplay the incident and quickly cleaned up the site, but left 50,000 cubic metres of plutonium-contaminated soil. More than half a century later, the accident is still a source of tension between Madrid and Washington. FRANCE 24's Céline Schmitt and Armelle Exposito report.

Back in 2015, Guatemala's President Otto Perez Molina was forced to resign before being eventually found guilty of fraud and criminal conspiracy. His downfall seemed proof that impunity for corruption was not inevitable in a country plagued by 40 years of civil war. Perez was the prize catch of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), but this victory was short-lived. In 2018, the Commission was dissolved by the new president, Jimmy Morales, whom it was investigating. Since then, the justice system has been in the government's crosshairs: magistrates are arrested, imprisoned or forced into exile; journalists and lawyers risk the same fate. FRANCE 24's Laurence Cuvillier and Matthieu Comin report on the country's authoritarian drift.

In 1953, a gigantic storm swept across the North Sea and caused a tidal wave in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. Many dykes controlling water levels were simply swept away as the water spread far inland. While more than 300 people died in the UK, over 1,800 lost their lives in the Netherlands. At the time, around a fifth of the Netherlands was below sea level. More than 2,000 square kilometres of land were flooded there, including almost the entire province of Zeeland. Protective structures have since been created. But will they be sufficient to hold back the expected rise in sea levels due to climate change? FRANCE 24's Alix Le Bourdon reports.

In 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place. It was a courageous act of resistance against the Nazis by several hundred Jewish fighters. Since 1941, the Jewish population of the Polish capital – approximately 400,000 people – had been confined by the Nazi occupiers to a small neighbourhood in the center of the city. Many died as a result of starvation and diseases there. Others were sent to the Treblinka death camp. 

Back in 2018, the signing of a peace deal between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his longtime rival Riek Machar created hope and optimism. The people of South Sudan, an independent nation since 2011, were emerging from a brutal civil war. However, five years later, this peace agreement is mostly respected only in Juba, the young nation's capital. Elsewhere, the fear of conflict remains palpable – a fear that has been further accentuated by the conflict in neighbouring Sudan. FRANCE 24's team reports.