24/06/2025 - Selected for the Sunny Side of the Doc pitch with Greenland, The Icy Eldorado, the Parisian production company is brimming with projects

Founded in 2002, French company Temps noir has produced over one hundred documentaries, including Kubrick by Kubrick [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Gregory Monro (Emmy Award in 2021), Gérard Philippe, Le dernier hiver du Cid by Patrick Jeudy (Cannes Classics 2022) and also Chaplin et "Les Temps modernes" - La Voie du silence by Gregory Monro which will be released tomorrow at Il Cinema Ritrovato. Today, they pitched in the Current Affairs & Investigation programme of the 36th Sunny Side of the Doc their project Greenland, The Icy Eldorado by Jean-Yves Cauchard and Vivien Meltz. We met in La Rochelle with producer Song Pham, who leads the project, and with Martin Laurent, associated producer and co-founder of the company, which has a total of eight producers (including Nadège Hasson, Serge Gordey, Tancrède Ramonet, Alice Mansion, Jérémy Zelnik et Kevin Michel). 

Cineuropa: What is Greenland, The Icy Eldorado by Jean-Yves Cauchard et Vivien Meltz about?
Song Pham: Donald Trump's recent statements on Greenland have raised questions about the long-standing interest in this territory. The film will first explain the geopolitical issues surrounding this island, which is the largest in the world: geostrategic stakes with an American military presence, mining resources, and others related to transport, as the melting ice is opening up new shipping routes that would save the United States a lot of time. Beyond these issues, the documentary will focus mainly on the Greenlandic perspective, as the question of Greenland's independence from Denmark is becoming increasingly pressing: the 57,000 inhabitants have a choice to make.

Filming has just begun with the aim of gathering the views of a broad spectrum of Greenlandic society (politicians, mining industry players, environmentalists, etc.) by combining interviews and scenes from everyday life in order to really convey a sense of the territory. Filming will also take place in Denmark, the United States and at the European Commission to gather the perspectives of the major powers. The goal is to deliver the film in early 2026, and Arte GEIE has committed to co-producing it. In La Rochelle, we hope to complete the financing, as geopolitical films are very expensive due to their international scope, so all pre-purchases are welcome.

What is the editorial line of Temps noir?
Martin Laurent :  The fact that there are eight of us producers allows us to cover a fairly broad range of topics, from history to culture, society, and so on. But what our films have in common is that they question the way the world works (how it functions, how it evolves, how it changes, where it is headed) by seeking out the political dimension, by scratching beneath the surface, because events do not happen by chance. From this point of view, geopolitics is particularly interesting because it is at the crossroads of these different questions. This is also in line with our loyalty to certain partners such as Arte GEIE, with whom we are currently working on Tunisie, le mystère Saïed by Vanina Kanban, a film reviewing the Tunisian revolution, which is also supported by RTS.

What other projects are you currently working on?
We have about twenty in production or in development agreements with channels. First of all, it's important to note that international co-productions are very important to us, with films that are always a little different from those we produce within the French ecosystem alone, and projects that are often very ambitious economically. Among them are Roy Cohen's I Hear Your Voice (co-produced with Hungary, Italy and Switzerland, in which the director, back in Israel, questions the conditions under which he can continue to live in his country), À la tribune by Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche (co-produced by Home Made Docs for Israel, Switzerland and Canada) on the place of Arab members of parliament in the Knesset, and a project on Afghanistan, co-produced with Belgium, the details of which we cannot reveal (but which we have already pitched at IDFA and which has been selected for Sheffield this week among the projects).

We are also exploring the field of documentary filmmaking with three films that have received advance funding from the CNC: in pre-production Nos défaites ne prouvent rien by Tancrède Ramonet and in production, distributed by Jour2Fête, Ceux qui tiennent la laisse by Gilles Balbastre and Le bonheur est dans la lutte by Olivier Besancenot (about the journey of a Chilean activist who disappeared during the events of 1973 and his family – co-produced with Belgium and Chile). Three political films that will not leave viewers indifferent. It should also be noted that the routes for audiovisual financing are fairly clearly identified, whereas in cinema, we are a little more in a prototype dimension with longer gestation periods.

At the heart of our editorial line are, of course, the projects we do for French television. Two notable examples are productions for France Télévisions, in co-produced with INA : Renaud, Histoire Intime by Tancrède Ramonet and the 3 x 52’ Yvan Colonna, Vies et Mort by Agnès Pizzini and Ariane Chemin. And for Arte, the 2 x 52’ historical Ceux de Charlemagne by Jean Bulot on French military collaboration with the Nazis.

(Translated from French)