Émilie Rousset et Louise Hémon

The televised debate is far more than the final sequence in the race to win over electors. It is an exceptionally dramatic event in which individual and collective emotions are exacerbated, a show marked by the constant nervousness and the stamina of its protagonists, an atypical play in which we think we know the characters, the setting and the directing, but which is scripted live before the eyes of the public. 

The stage laid out as a film set and the conventions for live programmes are applied. Two actors, face to face at a table, Emmanuelle Lafon and Laurent Poitrenaux, replay these fragments before the eyes of the public and the cameras. This final debate, a blend of rhetoric and adrenaline, has its own filmic language, editing principles, set and media history. 

Since 2015, Émilie Rousset and Louise Hémon have been creating the "Rituals" series, an ongoing collection of films and performances with its finger on the pulse of our society, exploring the theatrical potential that lies in the gap between the original document and its representation. With its highly codified rules, the televised debate is a veritable modern ritual. A ritual of democracy or of television? The frontier is blurred. 

Duration: 1 hour