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."

This week, France in Focus is shining a spotlight on the father of modernist architecture, on the 60th anniversary of his death. Franco-Swiss master Le Corbusier laid the foundations for a new epoch, with his revolutionary 1923 book "Towards an Architecture" acting as a blueprint for architects to this day.

Le Corbusier is best known for his avant-garde urban housing projects, like the Cité Radieuse building in Marseille. The UNESCO World Heritage site attracts over 70,000 visitors a year.

Outside of France, he created large-scale cities like Chandigarh in India, and inspired renowned architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa when building the new Brazilian capital Brasilia.

But his architectural aesthetic was not always showered with praise, with critics calling his urban housing projects soulless. Over the last decade, evidence has also surfaced showing that Le Corbusier had alleged ties to fascist groups and spent time with the French collaborationist regime in Vichy during World War II.

FRANCE 24's Jennifer Ben Brahim looks at what made Le Corbusier one of the most revered but also reviled architects of the 20th century.

Last year's summer of sport shone a light on the French capital's iconic monuments, with many Olympic events taking place in or around Parisian landmarks, to the delight of spectators around the world. But the Olympics came with a pledge: that the event would improve conditions in districts like the Seine-Saint-Denis department, the poorest in mainland France. So has this promise been fulfilled? FRANCE 24's Sonia Baritello and Olivia Salazar-Winspear report.

Located just outside Paris, the Seine-Saint-Denis department is now home to a state-of-the art swimming pool, with championship diving facilities. The aquatic centre cost €175 million and is supposed to serve the local community. We went to find out if this infrastructure is truly accessible to all.

One year after the Games, the Athletes' Village and the Media Village in Seine-Saint-Denis have been repurposed to provide housing in a city where demand for apartments is sky high. Thousands of homes have been created there for prospective buyers, social tenants and local businesses.

Yet this urban regeneration is not yet fully complete, leaving many residents wondering if and when the neighbourhood will really feel the benefits of the 2024 Olympics. 

To mark the centenary of his birth, France in Focus looks back at Frantz Fanon's extraordinary career: a volunteer at the age of 18 to fight the Nazis, a committed writer against racism and colonialism, a visionary psychiatrist and a campaigner for Algerian independence.

Frantz Fanon, an anti-colonial and anti-racist icon, didn't hold back. During his short life, he spared no effort to fight for, as he put it: "the cause of the people, the cause of justice and freedom."

At just 18 years old, he left his native Martinique to voluntarily join Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces. The young soldier was decorated for his service, risking his life to fight the Nazis. But the recognition was superficial: Black people were subjected to racism, both in the military and in civilian life. He felt disillusioned – in France, his heroism mattered less than the colour of his skin.

After studying medicine in Lyon, Fanon published his first book. "Black Skin, White Masks" examines colonialist constructs, in an attempt to break free from them. That same year, he completed his psychiatry internship at Saint-Alban, in Lozère, alongside François Tosquelles. This Spanish anti-fascist political refugee introduced him to an innovative practice of social therapy – a means of treating mental health patients with dignity.

In 1953, Fanon was sent to French Algeria. At just 28, he became chief physician at the hospital in Blida. Following Tosquelles's principles, he transformed his department and revolutionised what was at the time a racist and morally bankrupt form of colonial psychiatry.

At the same time, he became involved in the Algerian revolution, treating wounded fighters. In December 1956, he resigned from his hospital position and moved to newly independent Tunisia. There, he continued his work as a psychiatrist, contributed to the FLN (National Liberation Front) newspaper El Moudjahid, and represented Algeria at Pan-African conferences.

Fanon would not live to see the outcome of his struggle. He died of leukaemia in 1961 at the age of 36, one year before Algeria gained independence.

A hundred years after his birth in Fort-de-France in 1925, Fanon remains a powerful anti-racist and anti-colonial reference for intellectuals, artists and activists around the world.

This week, France in Focus explores the "Bétharram scandal", named after the Catholic school in southwestern France where hundreds of pupils were subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse for decades. The perpetrators of these crimes were never brought to justice, despite complaints lodged as early as the 1990s. Our colleagues at franceinfo investigate. Warning: Viewers may find this report disturbing.

Watch moreBayrou and Bétharram: Did French PM lie? Did he cover up sex abuse?

Today, the vast majority of the cases are ineligible for prosecution due to the statute of limitations. But victims are still demanding accountability, notably from current Prime Minister François Bayrou, who was education minister at the time and a high-ranking local figure. 

A French parliamentary commission was appointed in March and the findings of its inquiry will be published shortly.

Our colleagues at franceinfo have been looking into the case and hearing from the victims first-hand.

Ahead of the United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, our reporters went to meet some of the French scientists working to better understand and preserve the ocean. From high-tech robots 6,000m below sea level to critical mineral exploration in the Pacific, the team takes a look at some of the initiatives across the country. They also explore how cuts to climate change projects in the US are having an impact in France.