Alexander Grothendieck, Sur les Routes d'un Génie

Grothendieck is an illustrious unknown who makes himself talked about to an infinite extent, especially since his silence. This very great mathematician of the second half of the twentieth century interrupted his research to make a powerfully visionary moral protest against the current conditions of science, and more broadly against the corrupted state of mankind. He withdrew from the world. The film aims to show the effects of this withdrawal on various individuals: mathematicians, peasants, poets, and spiritual adventurers. Far from painting a full-length portrait of the great man, it depicts the chance discoveries that led them to Grothendieck, a man of whom they initially knew nothing, and whose self-imposed seclusion and power has never ceased to intrigue them. The current state of France, the history of Europe, the place of science in the world, and the question of the end of time are all implicated in their quest. The film has already had successful showings in universities, at the Novela science festival, on Toulouse television, and elsewhere. It will soon be shown in Nantes, Toulouse, Montpellier, and Montreal.