Notre-Dame Résurrection

Now streaming on TV5MONDEplus

The day after the fire, Emmanuel Macron promised to rebuild Paris’ iconic cathedral in just five years. A promise kept, as Notre Dame has reopened its doors to the public after 2,064 days of closure. Filmmaker Xavier Lefebvre followed the restoration project to create the documentary Notre-Dame Résurrection.

Read the Q&A with Director Xavier Lefebvre

Interview by Clément Thiery

Where were you the night of the fire, April 15, 2019?

Xavier Lefebvre: I was at home in Paris. We all know where we were at that moment, much like during the attacks of September 11, 2001. My mother-in-law called me on the phone and said, “Turn on the TV, Notre Dame is burning!” I couldn’t believe it... The next day, two producers invited me to make a film on the subject. I declined, but the result is beautiful: Saving Notre Dame [by Charlène Gravel and Quentin Domart], about the first year after the disaster and the battle to prevent the monument from collapsing.

A cathedral to rebuild, 130 days of filming over four and a half years. How did your own documentary come about?

Electron Libre Productions had initially contacted me to make a film for France 2 about craftsmanship in the French regions, linked to the restoration work. But we quickly wanted to tell a more ambitious story: to follow the restoration project in its entirety, filming both in Paris (the restoration of the cathedral itself) and outside (work in the forests of Sarthe and Orne, where oak trees were felled for the new framework, and in various workshops in Troyes, Corrèze, Vaucluse, Lorraine, and Normandy). The public organization in charge of the conservation and restoration of Notre Dame, which co-produced the film, opened the doors of the construction site and gave us access to the companies and craftspeople involved. Filming began in June 2020. A little over a year after the fire, the effort to secure the building was complete, but Notre Dame was scarred. There were protection nets everywhere.

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All photos courtesy of Xavier Lefebvre - Électron libre - France Télévisions - Établissement public Notre-Dame

“On the scaffolding,” a stained-glass artist says in the film, “we had to work in unison with the crane passing over us, the mason, the roofer, the carpenter... Everything had to be anticipated.” How did you manage to film under such challenging conditions?

It must have been much more difficult for the approximately 2,000 workers involved in the restoration, but we had the same constraints. We wore protective suits and respiratory masks in the areas exposed to lead dust, a consequence of the fire. In the film, you can see mural conservation artists in white spacesuits, at work in the chapels. We also wore protection to access the organ and the charred remains of the framework, considered archaeological artifacts, were sorted and numbered. At the end of the day, we went through a decontamination shower.

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What was your goal with this documentary?

There are a lot of things we didn’t want to do. With my two co-authors, Alain Zenou and Gilles Deiss, we didn’t want to make a traditional “construction site film” – even though that’s the subject, paradoxically – with sequences in which we follow an artisan who then faces the camera to talk about their movements. That would have turned the film into a work of journalism. We also didn’t want to make a chronological film, though that’s contradictory since a construction site progresses in stages. I wanted to interview the craftspeople as late as possible so they would have enough perspective to discuss their experience. And above all, I didn’t want to lose the viewers with overly technical explanations. This wasn’t meant to be a prime-time film about engineering, mathematics, and surveying, though the work behind the restoration is incredible. The framework of the spire itself is an extraordinary scientific challenge that I still don’t fully understand!

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You filmed and interviewed engineers, architects, sculptors, stonemasons, stained-glass artists, rope access workers, roofers, organ specialists, and even the French president. Was there one particular area that fascinated you the most?

It would be unfair to highlight one profession over another. I can only admire the meticulous work of the mural conservation artists, the gestures of the carpenters who squared the logs with axes, shaving off chips as thin as cigarette paper with every strike... And what about the work of the scaffolders? Visually, what blew me away most during the restoration was the scaffolding itself, which became this kind of polymorphic monster. From one week to the next, the inside of the cathedral could be filled with thousands of metal tubes, an organic blob that was constantly being built, taken apart, and moved elsewhere... Entering it felt like climbing onto an oil platform!

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Not all scaffolding has disappeared. The cathedral reopened to visitors on December 8, but the restoration is far from over. What still needs to be done?

The entire interior of the cathedral is finished, as well as the framework, roof, and covering. The spire is also complete. It’s only missing its twelve apostles – statues designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and installed at the base of the spire in 1861 – which were miraculously removed just four days before the fire to be restored in Dordogne! They’ll be reinstalled in 2025. From the outside, especially on the back of the cathedral, you can see that all the upper parts have been restored or rebuilt. They look brand new. You can easily tell the difference with the lower parts, the flying buttresses, and the presbyteries, which still need to be renovated. There’s about three more years of work to be done, but that doesn’t prevent the public from returning.

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A complete restoration of the cathedral is something unprecedented since Viollet-le-Duc’s work in the mid-19^th century. Is this the silver lining of the fire?

Absolutely! Typically, maintenance work is done in small bits, every year or two, and when you’re done, it’s time to start over... That’s the huge contradiction of the fire. It was a historical tragedy (which, let’s remember, caused no fatalities, even though a mass had just begun), but it allowed for the restoration of the organ, the stained-glass windows, and all 29 chapels surrounding the nave and the choir. Not to mention a complete cleanup of the place. I remember visiting the cathedral a few years before the fire: It was a dark, grey cavern, damaged by time, visitors, dust, and candle smoke... The restoration work (which, by the way, has been carried out without any accidents) also led to a rediscovery of forgotten craft techniques. For example, to square the felled trees and turn them into beams like they did in the 12^th century, the carpenters used a doloire, an ancient axe that had to be forged specially for the project.

What moment during filming left the strongest impression on you?

Thanks to the scaffolding, we were able to touch, observe, and film elements that are now inaccessible – like the oculus, the element that locks the vault of the crossing, with its little stone angels. It’s now 108 feet above the ground! I was also there in 2022 when the remains of the rood screen, the stone curtain separating the choir from the nave in the 13^th century, were uncovered. I was filming while the archaeologists were clearing the site. I saw the face of a sculpted dead Christ emerge, and I realized I was witnessing a historic moment. My God, it was beautiful...

Did this documentary take on a religious significance for you?

I was baptized, raised in the Christian faith, and I attended Les Francs Bourgeois, a religious high school in Paris, but I am no longer a believer. That’s due to my work, the people I’ve met, and the cultures I’ve been exposed to around the world. Today, I feel more spiritually connected in a forest than in a church. That being said, the restoration of Notre Dame, a multicultural and multireligious project, taught me a lot. It showed me just how capable human beings are of achieving great things when they set their minds to it.

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Charging admission to the cathedral to fund the maintenance of national heritage: Are you for or against it?

I don’t have an opinion on this matter. I know Stéphane Bern, France’s “Mr. Heritage,” isn’t opposed. After all, the Sagrada Família in Barcelona charges visitors. As long as worshippers aren’t required to pay to attend mass, why not? After all, many tourists come to Paris specifically to visit Notre Dame, just like they visit the Louvre.

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You’re also the director of the documentary series Dans les bottes de Lucky Luke, available on TV5MONDEplus. What memories do you have of filming in the American West?

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It was such a great experience! The goal was to travel across the country with Jul [the current author of Lucky Luke] and compare the comic book to reality. Where did Morris [the series’ creator in 1946] get it right? Where did he go wrong? And what remains of the cowboy myth today? We filmed two years ago, and Donald Trump was already campaigning; he had signs everywhere in the Midwest. It’s easy to film in the United States. The landscapes are magnificent, people love to open up and share their stories, and they have a way with words!

The documentary Notre-Dame Resurrection will be available to stream on TV5MONDEplus on December 15, 2024!