ARTE Distribution Aligns with PBS for Building Notre-Dame

Following the success of Notre-Dame, The Secrets of the Builders on France Télévisions, PBS launched a one-hour version of the documentary entitled Building Notre-Dame.

Building Notre-Dame became the highest-rated hour of Secrets of the Dead on PBS’s WNET in the past year with over 1.1 million viewers. The original doc, Notre-Dame, The Secrets of the Builders, took five years to make and cost over €3.8 million. Directed by Emmanuel Blanchard and produced by Program33, it recounts 800 years of the cathedral’s story through animation, live action and testimonies.

Distributed by ARTE Distribution, Notre-Dame, The Secrets of the Builders has presold around the world. The 90-minute version of the film will be screened at the Sunny Side of the Doc online video library.

Ken Follett, author of The Pillars of the Earth saga and an expert interviewed in the film, said: “One of the things we learned on the 15th of April (fire of 2019) was how much Notre Dame means to people all over the world”

Céline Payot Lehmann, head of ARTE Distribution, added: “A quality that should make the April anniversary come back every year for buyers. The high production value of the film and the power of attraction of Notre Dame has allowed us to secure over 20 presales worldwide, including ZDF, Radio-Canada, CCTV in China, EBS in Korea, AMC in Spain, Canal+ in Poland, and multiple other European territories. Ancient history is a genre that works well and is highly in demand. We recently sold The true story of Toutankhamon’s treasure to NHK, CCTV, SBS in Australia, CuriosityStream, RTL in Germany, Mediaset in Italy, Al Jazeera, Movistar in Spain and Kultura TV in Russia.”

Lehmann continued: “For upcoming Sunny Side of the Doc, we picked up Who Killed the Roman Empire, Incas, the True Story, Saving Cleopatra’s Temple, Egypt: The Treasure of the Sacred Bulls and Antisemitism: 2000 Years of History for which we are looking for presales.”