William Karel - "If we don't find witnesses, we don't do the film"

Currently, William Karel he is working on a film about Sarkozy seen from abroad - this is a very delicate topic. Investigative research in France has completely changed since Sarkozy is in office. He decides about the heads of the major French audiovisuel networks, so he knows them. Editors and journalists are reluctant to conduct reasearch. There is no censorship but networks and their editors censor themselves. Karel's method is to have witnesses tell the story. They are never paid, because "then they would become actors." He says: "I chose an important public figure, and a story that is not necessarily linked to current events. Then I call the channels, and if they accept, we receive money. After that we start looking for witnesses of the story we want to tell. If we don't get witnesses, we won't do it." He usually works 3 months on the preparation, 3 months in finding witnesses, and another 3 months on the shooting. When doing his film about the CIA, he benefitted from a law that had not yet passed: "People from inside the agency were not supposed to be interviewed or write books. But this restriction did not exist for TV testimonies, so people were able to talk. Usually we need about 15 witnesses. You can talk to 50 historians and it will not be as interesting as real witnesses. We spend a lot of time on convincing them to talk to us. In France they usually don't speak at all but in England or the US they do." Karel is "very optimistic" about the future of TV investigative journalism: "I hope i am not wrong, which i generally am. I am quite naive, but I hope that there are glorious days ahead. All the editors talk about investigative journalism. Journalists want to research current affairs rather than doing what everyone does. There are dozens of people arriving on the market, who are carrying on the profession."

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