page_title: Frédéric Fougea
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Frédéric Fougea / Biography
caption_attribution_description: a bear, from the "Parc animalier des Pyrénées"
context_page_description: Frédéric Fougea is a French author, director and cinema and television producer, born on 4 March 1961 in Paris. He heads the production company Boréales, which he founded in 1987. His films are recognisable for their particular style, mixing documentary and fiction: constructed more like "narratives", than classic documentaries, they are often described as "tales". Their focus tends to be the relationship between humans and animals; exploring the animalistic qualities of man and the human traits of animals.
context_section_description: From a young age, Fougea demonstrated a taste for travel and awareness for other cultures and civilisations. Alongside his traditional education (secondary school followed by Business School in Paris Sup de Co Paris) he set aside several months every year in order to travel: South America, Asia, a year in the United States of America and a year at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, one of the best business schools in the Asia-Pacific. He began his professional life with the establishment of a service-sector company in Equatorial Guinea, where he stayed for three years. On his return to Paris, he launched himself into audiovisual work: in 1987, with his mother and his brother Barthélémy Fougea, he launched the production company Boréales. Fougea’s knowledge of ethology and anthropology, along with his appreciation for the oral tradition, legends and singular destinies, can all be found in his films.
  Between 1989 and 1999 he wrote and produced, with his company Boréales and Canal+, a series of thirteen animal films, entitled Les Seigneurs des animaux (The Lords of the Animals). The series was primarily concerned with the extraordinary relationships maintained between humans and animals in traditional societies. Il danse pour ses cormorans (1993), the most famous work of the series, tells the story of a Chinese fisherman who has trained his cormorants using ancestral techniques: they obey his voice and movements and fish for him. This anthology saw great success, internationally. Broadcast on over one hundred channels in every country, translated into forty languages, it brought back more than one hundred awards from festivals worldwide, among them an International Emmy Award and the Grand National Prize for Audiovisual Creation (1994).
  At the same time, he produced, in collaboration with his brother Barthélémy Fougea, the collection Passions d’enfants (1996) that portrays young musical prodigies from all four corners of the globe, through the discovery of their world and their music. Frédéric Fougea has always been very drawn to music; he plays the saxophone and has been part of a jazz band, Messe Câline, for several years. Music also plays an important role in the films of Boréales. He entrusts Laurent Ferlet with the composition of the majority of his film music.
  He made his first venture into cinema in 1998, in writing and directing the feature film Hanuman, in coproduction with Gaumont. The film depicts the remarkable friendship between a young Scotsman and a macaque who helps him to fight against cultural heritage traffic in India.
  After having produced animal documentaries such as "The Monkey Prince" or "The Fabulous Adventure of Men and Animals", he wrote the narration for "A Species Odyssey" (2003), Jacques Malaterre’s popular docu-fiction dedicated to the prehistoric. In its first broadcast on France 3, the docu-fiction was watched by 8.7 million viewers, 34.2% of the public; referred to by Le Parisien as a real "television event". Frédéric Fougea produced sequels to this film: "Homo sapiens" in 2005 and "The Rise of Man" in 2007. This trilogy was broadcast globally. It benefitted notably from the scientific expertise of paleoanthropologist Yves Coppens.
  In the meantime, Frédéric Fougea wrote and produced the true story of a chimpanzee and its trainer in "Ham, Astrochimp #65" (2006), directed by Jérôme-Cecil Auffret. He encountered cinema again when he co-wrote the original screenplay with Michel Fessler for "Man to Man" (2005), the epic saga of two pygmies in Europe at the end of the 19th century, directed by Régis Wargnier, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Joseph Fiennes in the main roles.
  In 2008, he began the collection Ce jour-là, tout a change, for France Télévisions. Created for a prime time audience, and made with substantial production value, the series aims to transport the viewer to behind the scenes of power and to relive all the intensity and drama of the key moments in our history. Following "L’Assassinat d’Henri IV "and "L’Évasion de Louis XVI", "L’Appel du 18 juin" was broadcast in commemor
caption: A brown bear in the Pyrenees
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