Plot Summary

François Hollande, François Bayrou, Christiane Taubira, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Arlette Laguiller, Jean-Marie Le Pen... reveal the driving forces behind their strategies, recount their joys and doubts, and talk about the exhilaration of popular jubilation and the harshness of an exhausting marathon—the adrenaline, the staging, the blows that are dealt and received, the hopes of victory and, in the end, more often than not, defeat. Through the testimonies of eighteen former candidates, "big" and "small," who participated in the Elysée competition between 1969 and 2012, this documentary directed by Jean-Baptiste Péretié reveals the human and political comedy of the presidential elections, the great theater of the conquest of power.