After recounting the Grégory affair on Netflix, producer Elodie Polo Ackermann immerses us in another news item that fascinated the media around the world in the 1990s. 74 people were then found dead between 1994 and 1997 in Switzerland, in Canada and France, all members of the sect of the Order of the Solar Temple.
“Solar Temple, the impossible investigation”: @TMCtv dives behind the scenes of a cult that still fascinates https://t.co/xPUAPh4OoY pic.twitter.com/KgTZrRoPrj
— TF1Info (@TF1Info) June 16, 2022
Assassinations or collective suicides? The investigation experienced multiple twists and brought to light the delusions and scams of two enlightened gurus, Luc Jouret and Jo di Mambro.
“This case marked its time, it tells of an era.”
Elodie Polo Ackermannon franceinfo
“The investigation is crazy, with amazing twists and turns. There are all the ingredients to captivate the audience”, explains Elodie Polo Ackermann, whose trademark we find in this series in four episodes: no voice-over, only archives and testimonies. Former followers thus take the floor, in particular the conductor Michel Tabachnik, the investigators of the time as well as three journalists who covered the affair by working hand in hand: the Frenchmen Gilles Bouleau and Bernard Nicolas, and the Swiss Arnaud Bédat.
“I was a very young journalist, it was my first big deal. I hadn’t expected that it was going to swallow up my journalistic life for several months and that it was going to pursue me almost 30 years later. When Elodie explained to me that it was going to tell the story of the police, judicial and also journalistic investigation, I found the idea brilliant. I said to myself: why didn’t I think of it before? I had to go get my boxes , I had kept a lot of things. When you open them, you get the atmosphere of the time in your face and everything comes back quite quickly”testifies Arnaud Bédat.
Solar temple, the impossible investigation, a four-part documentary series. The first two air Friday, June 17 at 9:15 p.m. on TMC