THE LAST BALL OF THE FOURTH

How did France move from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic? What crisis led to this? What upheavals? And how many stages were there in the process? To answer these questions, we must go back fifty years, to 1958. On May 13, a chain of events shakes France and the Republic. Part of the army and supporters of French Algeria seize power in Algiers and demand a radical change of policy in Paris.
Rather than a mere conspiracy, these events help to bring about the collapse of the Fourth Republic and the return of General de Gaulle as head of state who will then create the Fifth Republic.
Rarely used radio archives lend a new voice to the silent footage of the “French News” of the time preserved by the INA and the images filmed by the Army ECPAD service, many of which have never been seen before. By exploring the archives of those tumultuous days, by bringing forth the issues of the secret power negotiations, the makers of this documentary bring to life the daily events that took place between May 13 (the Algiers uprising) and early June 1958 (General de Gaulle’s first visit to Algeria).