Forty years after the abolition of the death penalty in France, voted on September 18, 1981, the guillotine remains in the collective imagination as the instrument of the death sentence. This machine, developed during the Revolution to provide more equal justice, was presented as progress. Over time, opinion has been divided on the subject of the death penalty, the guillotine becoming the object of human cruelty, a relic of an archaic way of dispensing justice and fueling numerous debates. around the death penalty and its abolition.

Directed by: Jean-Charles Deniau
With Robert Badinter