The documentary drama Tuer au nom de Dieu was broadcast on France 2 on 26 August 2025. It is loosely based on the book “Tous ceux qui tombent.Visages du massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy” by Jérémie Foa, amU fellow at Iméra in 2024-2025.
Summary
Ten years after the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of August 1572, a survivor, Jean, leads an investigation to find the killers of his father and brother. He questions the main witnesses and protagonists of the tragedy: Catherine de Medici, Henri III, Henri de Guise, Henri de Navarre and Marguerite de Valois. By unmasking the murderers, he discovers that the massacre did not take place as he had been led to believe.
- A fictional documentary directed by Hugues Nancy
- Written by Adila Bennedjaï-Zou & Hugues Nancy
- With the collaboration of Jérémie Foa
Freely inspired by the book Tous ceux qui tombent. Visages du massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy by historian Jérémie Foa, published by Éditions La Découverte in 2021, which shifts the focus on the best-known episode of the French Wars of Religion of the XVIᵉ century: the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre.
The two-part documentary drama is available on the france.tv platform until March 1st, 2026.
About Jérémie Foa
Specialist of the French Wars of Religion and mass violence in the sixteenth century, Jérémie Foa is a senior lecturer at Aix Marseille University and a member of the TELEMMe laboratory. He is also an honorary member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and of the Institut Universitaire de France. He was an amU fellow on research leave at Iméra from September 2024 to January 2025.
In Tous ceux qui tombent. Visages du massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy, he offers a microhistory of the massacre, an investigation ‘from below’ into both the victims and the ordinary murderers of the summer of 1572, in Paris and in the provinces.
