Actor Lorànt Deutsch stops off in Saintonge for "À toute berzingue", his historical web series

From Tuesday, July ^1st to Friday, July 4th, actor Lorànt Deutsch and his partner Emmanuel Sokol traveled around Saintes and its surrounding areas to film this new episode of "À toute berzingue". Online release scheduled for early August

"Oh Lolo, hello!" Thumbs up and a quick hello, this couple of drivers don't hesitate to slow down on the Cours National to greet the actor Lorànt Deutsch who, despite his cap, doesn't go unnoticed in the city center of Saintes, Thursday, July 3, late afternoon. The actor, whom the general public has seen on both small and large screens for the past twenty-five years, has created "À toute berzingue," a short program broadcast on YouTube. The idea is simple: to tell the story of a city, from Antiquity to the present day, in about twenty minutes.

And this week, it's Saintes and its surrounding areas that are in the spotlight. "I wanted to find a format to be on the Internet," the forty-year-old confides between takes. "People often asked me: 'When are you going to tell the story of Bordeaux? Orléans?' Emmanuel (Sokol, his partner) and I started at the end of 2018." In our country, they went through La Rochelle and Marennes-Oléron.

In nearly seven years, actor Lorànt Deutsch and his partner have filmed nearly 110 episodes of "À toute berzingue." "Target 250!" says the actor as he walks up the Cours National, before heading to Douhet to see the Paleolithic baptistery.

At the beginning of the adventure, the videos were no longer than seven minutes. "After Covid, we realized that Internet users could spend more time on our videos, so we decided to extend the format to around twenty minutes," says Emmanuel Sokol, videographer and longtime friend.

Sought after by tourist offices and local authorities, the duo monetizes their on-site videos, which have garnered between 35,000 and 300,000 views. The Saintes Grandes Rives tourist office, the Agglo, for example, paid €8,000 excluding tax for their visit to Saintonge. "We keep the choice of narration," insists Emmanuel Sokol. For each video, the method remains the same. "I get information from Wikipedia, the websites of national monuments, cities, and tourist offices," the actor explains. "I create a framework that I then compare with local scholars."

For the Saintes case, Lorànt Deutsch approached Muriel Perrin, the director of the Heritage Department of the City of Saintes, Cécile Trébuchet, a tour guide, and Jean-Louis Hillairet, an archaeologist who studied Roman roads. This was an essential starting point for the actor. "We know about the existence of Mediolanum Santonum because it was the end of the Via Agrippa, which connected it to Lugdunum (Lyon)," he rewinds. "It was no coincidence; it was the capital of Aquitaine at the beginning of our era, and it had the power of Milan."

For the purposes of their video, the two friends notably walked the amphitheater, went to the Fontcouverte golf course where you can admire the restored piers of the aqueduct. They also went to Barzan. "The Fâ was to Saintes what Ostia was to Rome, the main port that enabled trade," rejoices the forty-year-old with his distinctive wit. Pons and its dungeon, Saint-Pierre Cathedral, Saint-Eutrope and its crypt are among the duo's stops. This last place remains the actor's favorite. "The crypt is so vast, airy, the quality of its construction and its sarcophagus, all of that, I haven't seen anywhere else." The online broadcast is scheduled for the beginning of August.