In France's Loire Valley, castles are relying on the magic of Christmas to secure their future. Each winter, historical landmarks are turned into festive, fairy-tale settings, drawing tens of thousands of visitors. But beyond the lights and decorations lies a pressing challenge: how to preserve these iconic sites in the face of mounting structural and financial woes.

Watch moreFrench castle of Chambord celebrates five eventful centuries

Chambord, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the largest château in France's Loire Valley, spans 5,500 hectares and includes 426 rooms and 77 staircases. This year, the estate invested a record €200,000 in Christmas festivities, with the aim of generating up to €1 million in revenue. These funds will help maintain this vast and fragile giant. While Chambord has undergone many restorations over the past 500 years, one of its most urgent projects still lies ahead. The Francis I wing has been closed to the public since 2023 for security reasons as it's at risk of collapse.

Built on marshland, the château is increasingly affected by climate change: façades are leaning, floors are sinking and cracks continue to widen. Overall damage is estimated at €37 million, including €12 million needed for emergency work. The Christmas event is just a sparkle in the fight to save Chambord. A public fundraising campaign is currently underway, with renovations expected to begin in 2026.

Watch moreFrance's iconic Chateau de Chambord gets a makeover

Just 20 kilometres away from Chambord, the smallest castle in the region is embracing a more intimate and sustainable approach. Troussay has belonged to the same family for 125 years, spanning four generations. It's the first time its owners are opening the château to the public during the festive season. With handmade decorations, a recycled nativity scene competition and the support of friends, the aim is to keep costs low while maximising fundraising. The money raised will go towards urgent roof cleaning after three consecutive years of heavy rain and humidity. Despite receiving state funding, resources simply aren't sufficient. The château is therefore exploring creative new ways to finance its preservation.

Other sites are experimenting with entirely new economic models. Over the past eight years, the start-up Dartagnans has raised more than €8 million from 57,000 co-owners around the world, helping to save four ruined castles, including La Mothe Chandeniers. Abandoned for nearly a century after a fire in 1932, the château was rescued in 2017 through a pioneering crowdfunding campaign.

Read moreGlobal crowdfunding campaign buys French château

Rather than restoring it completely, the co-owners chose to preserve its wild, romantic character. Nature has reclaimed the site, with trees, ferns and wildlife now living in the ruins. Only the Lord's room, in the clock tower, will be restored and converted into a guest room, while the rest of the château will be secured and left frozen in time. Every year, the co-owners are invited back to witness the progress made and to share in the festive spirit.

In France, the mental health of young people has deteriorated in recent years, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic. In this edition, we met several young people suffering from mental health struggles, who shared their stories in the hope of overcoming taboos.

With one third of young people in France suffering from a mental health disorder, we take a closer look at the effects on their day-to-day lives. Adolescence is a sensitive period, "the age of all dangers" according to many psychologists, where teenagers navigate profound changes. 

Read moreWhy is Australia banning children under 16 from social media – and can they enforce it?

The mental health of many young French people has deteriorated in recent years, particularly since the Covid-19 health crisis. The rate of hospital admissions for suicide attempts and self-harm has skyrocketed, particularly among young girls. Increasing numbers of teenagers and young adults are suffering from depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder usually develop between the ages of 15 and 25. Indeed, 75 percent of chronic psychiatric illnesses appear before the age of 25.

Watch moreInside a French emergency psychiatric unit: Social stigma, a lack of beds and drug shortages

As the French government pledges to tackle mental health struggles, we met with several young people suffering from some of these disorders. These youngsters were willing to tell their stories with the hope of overcoming the taboos that still surround mental health issues.

Could Shein be suspended in France? The Chinese giant is under growing scrutiny for selling controversial products, including childlike sex dolls and bladed weapons. The ultra-fast fashion brand has just opened its first physical store in the BHV, one of Paris's iconic department stores. French fashion brands denounce what they call unfair competition in an already weakened sector: one in two fashion retailers is facing serious financial difficulties, with 37,000 jobs lost in the last decade. We take a closer look.

Ten years after the November 13 Paris terror attacks, France's security and intelligence services are dealing with reports of increasingly younger individuals who often become radicalised quickly via social networks. Through rare access inside the police's radicalisation telephone hotline, as well as interviews with terrorism experts, a former prisoner and a survivor of the Bataclan attack, we explore the lessons learnt since 2015 and what the terrorism threat looks like today.

With the Grand Egyptian Museum set to open in Cairo, we explore the enduring passion of the French for Ancient Egypt. With its hieroglyphics, pyramids and mysteries, the land of the pharaohs fascinates young and old alike. Exhibitions showcasing its ancient treasures are always a hit. So where does this passion originate from? We take a closer look in this edition of France in Focus.

With nearly 85,000 inmates for a capacity of only 62,000, French prisons are overflowing. In this rare documentary, our cameras were able to enter the Grenoble-Varces prison, which is regularly singled out for its unsanitary conditions and overcrowding. In this detention centre, inmates are sometimes crammed three to a cell measuring only nine square metres. With inhumane conditions, exhausted prison staff and record reoffending rates, the French prison system seems to be nearing breaking point. We take a closer look.

Fortnite, Valorant, and Rocket League tournaments are taking French stadiums by storm, drawing packed arenas and thousands of fans to spectacular shows. Esports is booming in France: the sector’s turnover has tripled in four years, clubs are becoming more established, and pro players are emerging as stars. Sonia Baritello, Olivia Salazar-Winspear, and Elodie Radenac followed the Vitality club during the Rocket League World Championships in Lyon to capture the excitement of this highly anticipated event. They also discussed the issue of gender equality in gaming with pro player Lou Henguelle during the Valorant World Championships at the Bercy arena in Paris.

At least one in five people in France suffer from a mental health condition. The issue has been named a priority for the government in 2025, which hopes to tackle a wide range of conditions, from mild symptoms to severe and chronic illnesses. Every day, psychiatric emergency departments in hospitals treat patients in distress, while operating in increasingly difficult conditions. To find out more, we spent time with the Ville-Evrard psychiatric unit of the Delafontaine Hospital in Saint-Denis, north of Paris.

Fayçal Mouaffak is a psychiatrist who heads up the Emergency Psychiatric Services unit of Ville-Evrard in Seine-Saint-Denis. When he arrives at work, four patients are already waiting for him on stretchers in the emergency room corridors. All of them have spent the night there and one 18-year-old girl has already been there for three days. The hustle and bustle and noise of the ward often aggravates their symptoms. The author of "Diary of a Psychiatrist on the Frontline in Seine-Saint-Denis" starts his working day at breakneck speed, trying to find beds for them as quickly as possible while also providing the necessary medical care.

Finding beds for patients is a daily struggle for the psychiatrists. They spend a good part of their day making phone calls to get patients transferred. In 2023, there were 566,000 visits to emergency rooms for psychiatric reasons, an increase of 21 percent compared to 2019. At the same time, 8,800 beds have been cut in public hospital psychiatric wards over the past 15 years.

These shortages are partly due to a lack of staff. Psychiatry is one of the least popular specialties among medical students.

Stereotypes go some way to explaining this lack of interest. There are many assumptions about the patients. "People think psychiatry is a violent sector, but that's because they don't know any better. There is no more violence than anywhere else," says Nadia Cheffi, psychiatrist and head of the secure psychiatric emergency unit (known as CRUP in French) at Ville-Evrard. Psychiatry was her first choice for specialisation in medical school and she "has no regrets". Misconceptions also exist among healthcare professionals. "In discussions with our colleagues (...) we often see the old stereotypes come up: that psychiatry isn't really medicine," laments Dr. Mouaffak. However, he insists, "there are effective treatments, medical protocols (...) research is advancing rapidly (...) and there are also physiological factors involved in these illnesses."

Dr Mouaffak was one of the initiators of this secure psychiatric facility (CRUP), a response to seeing patients waiting far too long in the emergency rooms of hospitals without specialised care. The CRUP opened two years ago within the Delafontaine Hospital. Patients have their own rooms, receive treatment in a much calmer atmosphere, and can stay for up to 72 hours. This gives doctors the time to stabilise their condition before they return home. Alternatively, they can be transferred to other wards for longer stays in hospital. Both the patients and their caregivers say it’s a real relief: "It makes what I do meaningful again," says Hakima, an emergency room nurse.

Dr Mouaffak hopes to see this model adopted more widely. The Emergency Psychiatric Services unit of Ville-Evrard is set to open another CRUP within the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny – also located in the greater Paris region – in the near future.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, France has welcomed several hundred Gazans to safety. Priority has been given to families of children seriously injured in bombings, such as Ayham, who lost both his legs at just 15 years old on October 14, 2023. Artists and scientists have also been evacuated through the PAUSE program, which supports intellectuals in exile. Dr. Fadel Afana joined a team of psychiatrists at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, while Gazan rapper Abu Joury was evacuated with help from the Al Kamandjati association in Angers. Florence Gaillard and Mohamed Fahrat met with each of them to share their stories.

As war rages in Gaza, some of its citizens are beginning new lives in France. Abu Joury spent his entire youth in Gaza – he got married, built a music career, and buried his father there. But when the conflict erupted, he was forced to flee advancing Israeli troops. For months, he moved from one refugee camp to another, until he learned his wife was pregnant. At that moment, he knew they had to escape the Gaza Strip by any means necessary.

Dr. Fadel Afana is among the fortunate selected for the PAUSE program, which supports artists and scientists in exile. With his background in psychiatry and experience treating post-traumatic stress in war zones, he joined a team of doctors at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris. For him, the mental health crisis among Gazans has become an urgent emergency.

Seventeen-year-old Ayham arrived in Lyon with his father in January 2024, his life forever changed. A few months earlier, he lost his older brother and both legs in a bombing. Though he continues to receive regular hospital treatment, Ayham has begun walking again with the help of prosthetics and rehabilitation. Though his dream of playing professional football is no longer possible, he remains determined to fulfil new hopes for his future.

The fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge in 1975 was the beginning of a genocide that would claim up to 2 million lives. Among the hundreds of thousands of Cambodians who fled the horror, many found refuge in France. But 50 years on, what remains of their memories? We take a closer look in this edition of France in Focus.

"It may seem excessive, but in a sense we died that day because everything that was true the day before changed overnight." These words by Phouséra "Séra" Ing, a Franco-Cambodian artist, resonate like a painful echo of the countless lives pierced by war, genocide and exile.

Through the testimonies of survivors and their descendants, this episode of France in Focus explores the struggles of exile and the transmission of memory. How do survivors speak of the unspeakable? How do their children grow up with a legacy of silence and things left unsaid?

From the French embassy in Phnom Penh to Thai refugee camps, from villages in rural France to the suburbs of Paris, this film traces these journeys of exile and reconstruction. We meet Séra, who found a way to heal his wounds through comic books; Sambo, who took 15 years to feel at home in France; and Virak, who discovered his father's story late in life. Each of their stories reveals the difficulty of bringing generations together to discuss a collective trauma.

As a memorial to those lost in the Cambodian genocide is unveiled in France, survivors are finally learning to speak freely and heal. Because as Sun-Lay, president of the Fragmentis Vitae Asia Association, reminds us: "Memory is the remedy for the pain of the present."