Dear Friends Directors and Producers, while attending our 36 th Festival and during 7 days, 18 000 spectators and 4 000 schoolchildren have climbed on the roof of the world, at 8 850 meters of altitude, shared the exhausting work of hundreds of men in the middle of the desert sand in Nigeria, who, since centuries, have been extracted the precious salt, absolutely essential to survey.

With Alain Colas, single-handed sailor lost at sea in 1978, during the 1 st Route du Rhum, they have relived moments of emotion. They have tried to penetrate the mystery of Nil sources and to understand why an unknown disease have affected green turtles and seals of Hawaii ; they have noticed that if the Himalayas have his heroes, at the bottom of the mountain, children and men carry tonnes of food like donkeys with packsaddles.

They have travelled since 3 years with Sonia and Alexandre Poussin who have crossed 10 countries in Africa, walking 14 000 kilometres, without nor assistance, nor sponsor.

In Melanesia, they have seen how someone, from 16 years, must prove that he can beat the shark, king of the seas and jump from a bamboo tower, his ankles tied up together with lianas.

In Lower California, the grey whales and the whale-calf have surprised them and they have been moved by the magical ballet of the manta rays, in the Archipelago of Revillagigedos.

In Alaska, they have discovered the habits and the techniques of fishing of the Grizzly Bears and in Prince Williams Bay, a tribe of sea otters have demonstrated how, after the terrible ecological disaster of the oil tanker “Exxon Valdez”, they have colonized the nature once again.

So, once again and since more than a half century, your films will make Toulon the world capital of imagery, during 10 days.