First of all, who is Raël, and why devote a four-part documentary series to him on the global Netflix network? You have to be of a certain age to remember, with a yellow smile and a certain unease, this central character of the new religious movements of the end of the 20th century.e century. It was the time of God’s return with Pope John Paul II in charge in Rome, the ayatollahs in Tehran, the madmen of Allah everywhere and this one, therefore, this self-proclaimed prophet as half-brother of Jesus dressed like an Oralian…
Raël is the name given to the Frenchman Claude Vorilhon (born in 1946 in Vichy), singer in the 1960s, after having allegedly been contacted in 1973 by extraterrestrials (the Elohim) who explained to him that they were the creators of humanity in laboratory. It looks like a scenario from the films in the series Alien and this is partly the case since this fabulation was inspired by science fiction stories and the passion for UFOs like little green men of the post-war period. To spread his Good News, Vorilhon-Raël founded a new religious movement which has experienced quite an extraordinary surge in the French-speaking world, and in Quebec in particular.
It is this journey concentrating something of our time, at the same time zany, fake and of the period, therefore, that the production tells Rael. The prophet of extraterrestrials. This subject embodies the scientism, the saucer passion and the media sensationalism of the 1970s and 1980s.
French directors Alexandre Ifi and Antoine Baldassari conducted an investigation on four continents and succeeded in convincing the central actors of this absurd adventure to compose the first major filmed synthesis of Raëlism. The septuagenarian agreed at the last minute to be interviewed just as editing of the series had begun. He has been living in Japan for years and is always surrounded by faithful people, especially young women. He now defends a posture of serene detachment, even in relation to his movement.
His faithful among the faithful, the scientist Brigitte Boisselier, was found in Mexico. She was the one who orchestrated the big hoax at the end of 2002 which made people believe in the cloning of a human and she makes no apologies for it. She is still Raelian, persists and crosses herself. “If Raël said that everything is false, that it is elaborate, that it is a beautiful work of science fiction, I would burst out laughing and I would thank him deeply and I would change nothing about who I am and what I am. that I did,” she said with aplomb in an interview.
The media around the world then fell for it and so did the United States Senate. In an excerpt from a conference that he then gave to his disciples, we hear Raël congratulating himself on the move which would have made it possible to obtain the equivalent of 600 million dollars in advertising revenue. The Raëlians who testify in the documentary explain that ultimately, the lie matters much less than having made the cause known.
Two other participants in the group portrait with guru stand out for their fierce and well-informed critiques. Quebec investigative journalist Brigitte McCann looks back on her infiltration of the sect in Estrie for months with photographer Chantal Poirier. The reports she published after the cloning lie contributed to the discredit of the Raëlians here, as they had already been mistreated in France after the revelations about the movement’s pedophile opinions and practices. Mme McCann somewhat atones for the mistakes of the media here and elsewhere, who for a very long time served to complicitly promote Raël by having fun with him as if he were nothing more than a harmless and entertaining buffoon.
Another extended and strong testimony comes from laboratory technician Damien Marsic, who helped the DD Boisselier in his trickery of the false copy of a human in a test tube. He left the sect in 2016. “33 years of my life were stolen from me,” he says at the end of the documentary. It’s difficult to admit. It’s as if I had woken up from a long hypnosis. »
The story of this religious movement is valid for so many others. Once again, this is a big scam carried out by a bold or charismatic madman to financially and sexually exploit gullible people. Raël created from scratch a system allowing him to claim 10% of the salary of his followers under the pretext of building an embassy to welcome the Elohim, but also to obtain sexual favors at the request of a multitude of young women, sometimes even the teenage children of his followers.
The adventure continues in Japan and Africa with the Ivorian Yves Boni, Raelian since 1995, who presents himself in the documentary as the “African prophet of the movement”. In France, as in Quebec and the United States, the old fans from the beginning have practically disappeared from the public space. Raël and his Raëlians return there for a time with this documentary which could well, despite its critical will, revive interest, even attraction for this movement, the ways of the Elohim being impenetrable…