“It’s also the story of impossible grief for families,” says the director of the documentary

In six 30-minute episodes, broadcast on France 2, Benoît Bringer retraces the ten years of investigation, full of twists and turns and disillusionments, which have still not revealed what became of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing and its 239 people on board.

On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens, after around thirty minutes of flight between its departure point Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and its arrival point, Beijing in China. The Boeing 777 crew and 227 passengers were never found and are presumed dead.

Benoît Bringer is an investigative journalist, he notably worked on the affair of Panama Papers and the Russian Wagner Militia. In the documentary series MH370, the truth gone, divided into six 30-minute episodes and broadcast from Tuesday January 23, at 9:10 p.m. on France 2, it looks back on ten years of investigation and looks at “one of the greatest mysteries of the beginning of the century”.

franceinfo: Why is this film on the disappearance of the Malaysian Boeing a tragedy that haunts you?

Benoît Bringer: I think it’s a drama that haunts and obsesses all the people who begin to take an interest in this matter. What happened that night when a plane disappeared in mid-air, in its corridor, at cruising speed? The weather was perfect, there was no distress signal and suddenly it disappeared, it evaporated, it vanished. It’s a mystery, perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of the beginning of this century. There are few things to which we do not know the answer today, apart perhaps from the origins of Covid, for example, the disappearance of flight MH370 is one of the great mysteries of the beginning of the century.

What state of mind are the victims’ families in after ten years?

It’s very difficult to turn the page, to mourn. Moreover, this documentary is also the story of impossible mourning when we don’t have the answer, when we don’t know what happened.

“Families want this story to live on because they still hope to know what happened to their loved ones.”

Benoît Bringer

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There is in particular a Frenchman, Ghyslain Wattrelos, who lost three people, two children and his wife, on this plane and who does not want us to stop talking about it, who wants the investigations to continue, the research to continue. .

Does he still have hope?

He, personally, is quite admirable, quite incredible. I think we really need to listen to his testimony. And he didn’t want to give up because he had one son left and therefore he wanted to show his son that life was worth living. And he succeeded. It’s really very touching to see how he went through this ordeal and what came out of it today.

Not knowing what happened gives rise to lots of conspiracy theories, as is the case with every major unexplained event. And there, we see it too?

Yes that’s exactly it. There are so many twists and turns, lack of answers, things that don’t make sense, that we are completely lost, sucked in by this mystery. It’s like a kind of whirlwind that draws you in and so you become completely obsessed with this story of the disappearance of flight MH370. Obviously, some people will come up with lots of theories. Except that today, we are in 2024, there are social networks, there is continuous information, there is the tabloid press which wants to make clicks on the Internet and so all of that makes a kind of of enormous machine which creates plot, mystery, etc.

“It says something about our times and the media system.”

Benoît Bringer

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There were also plenty of false leads such as the attack or the suicide of the pilot, there was talk of a malicious act by the Americans who did not want the cargo in the hold to arrive in China. What are we sure of today?

Well to be very honest, we are sure of very few things and that is the problem. Why were communications cut inside the plane? Is this voluntary or not? Everything disappeared suddenly. Where exactly did he go?

Did he turn around?

That’s the official theory. And it must still be said, this is very important, that we found debris, particularly on the island of Reunion. This is why there was an investigation in France, because it is on French soil and this debris, for some, has been formally authenticated as coming from MH370. We still have an indication by going up the currents, we can know roughly where it would have ended up in the sea, but as long as we have not found the wreck, all that can be called into question and that that’s why some people do it, why theories appear.

And you, do you have a theory?

This is the hardest question! First, I invite everyone to watch the documentary this evening to form their opinion. We really made sure not to tell viewers what to think in such a sensitive story, particularly for the victims’ families, but to give them all the elements to form their own opinion.

I won’t make a theory until we find concrete proof of where he is.

Benoît Bringer

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There is a story that I discovered in your film. She’s this American woman who was very active at one point in the media. She represented the families of the missing, she herself said that she had her companion who was on the plane. She launched a crowdfunding campaign so that money would go to a whistleblower, someone who would know something and speak up. And then suddenly, she too disappeared. Do we know who this woman was?

It’s true that his companion was on the plane. But it’s true that the fact that it takes up so much space in the media and that it suddenly disappears will arouse suspicion among a lot of people. And in particular with Ghyslain Wattrelos, the Frenchman who with his two children and his wife on the plane and many people will wonder about a lot of characters in this story. Who are they really? Why do they appear and disappear? Why are they so involved in the search for this plane? These are very particular profiles that can really raise questions. Some will suspect them of being agents of the American intelligence services, the CIA. So there is really a whole atmosphere, an atmosphere in this series which is a kind of thriller and detective story somewhere with these characters too.

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