Society & Economy

Good ideas don´t grow on trees : Grr... Europe!

How do we live in Europe? What do we really know about our ´fellow countrymen´? With its partners, Franco-German channel ARTE inaugurated an ambitious collection of twenty documentaries which explore the lives of various inhabitants of the European Union. Be they squatters, ministers, farmers or holidaymakers, they were followed by young film-makers from their country equipped only with a basic digital camera. These are entertaining portraits which both arouse our curiosity and encourage reflection, sometimes with a provocative and ironic tone.

In the beginning, it was Nadine´s idea. Christian, her husband, thought that it would sell like hotcakes, and Claude, a friend, thought about how the project could be made into reality. In France, if you possess an entrepreneurial spirit, then inventing a digital level to help garden apprentices cut hedges straight is not such a tall order. 185,000 new companies are created every year in the European Union, but after five years, half of them have thrown in the towel. We follow three inventors who are in search of funding and leads for their new gadget, firstly in France and then in the rest of the European Union.