Pierre-Olivier François

Pierre-Olivier François is a French German TV reporter and documentary maker. Born in France in 1971, he studied political science and journalism at the Paris Institute for Political Science, and the free University of Berlin. He then started a carrier as TV Reporter and journalist, mostly for the French German public television ARTE, covering a wide range of topics in French and european politics, foreign affairs, but also culture and arts. He also worked for the German press, and sometimes for the Economist. From 2000 on, he also began to shoot documentary films, for ARTE and other international channels. Among others, he did two important films about South and North Korea, where he went five times since 2003:” North Korea, the border and the war”, in 2003, and “Divided Korea” in 2013 – first documentary ever where North and South Korean high-ranking witnesses tell their story together in the same film). Other films deal with power and oil in Putin’s Russia: “a barrel full of dream”, in 2009, the end of communism in the east: “Farewell comrade”, in 2012, Alzheimer disease, the future of the press, and most recently, in cooperation with PBS, about Cyberwar and about surveillance and the NSA.