The trials and tribulations of Cecilia and Nicolas Sarkozy during his presidential campaign.

Picture gallery

A look behind the scenes of Nicolas Sarkozy's rise to power, especially his transition from Minister of the Interior and head of the UMP to his campaign for French president. Viewers get to discover the strange politics of this new type of head of state: simplified, dynamic and populist (Ray Bans, gold chain, Johnny Halliday fan, chatty…), his rivalry with Dominique de Villepin, his little power games with Jacques Chirac and especially his distress when his wife Cecilia leaves him...

Filmed in great secret, La conquête is far from a polemic bomb that sets out to expose Nicolas Sarkozy's character. Part "fictionalization" (say the credits), but very real and well-documented, this ambitious portrait is fascinating despite dialogs written as quotations that are too punchy and characters who are more puppets than their originals. Oddly enough, Sarkozy comes out ahead after having cut Villepin into pieces, magnificently challenged Chirac and laid waste to all in his path, after he falls apart like a little boy left by his mother when his wife Cecilia leaves him.