The Normandy coast, studded with history and marked by weathered beauty, will remain on the TV landscape long after buyers leave the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Le Havre this week.
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This year marks the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord and the coast will feature prominently in historical documentaries from around the world, while local and international productions continue to focus on rugged locations.
Produced by Mediawan shingle CC&C and sold by France TV Distribution, the long-running “Apocalypse” doc brand marked the 80th anniversary with “Apocalypse: D-Day,” a two-part series that brought archive footage to life in vibrant color. The production outfit used in-house developed tools to colorize and remaster black-and-white footage, combining manual processing with AI assistance to give the footage dramatic impact.
"You can't just hang pretty colors everywhere," says Julia Schulte of France TV Distribution. "Everything was linked to historical research, to knowing the exact color of the uniforms, the exact color of the tanks. We've always lived with this story in black and white, so seeing these images was almost destabilizing. It seemed more like reality, as if it had been filmed yesterday. You had the feeling that you were really on the beaches of Normandy."
