Michael Pitiot

He was then recruited as audiovisual attaché at the French embassy in Vietnam, responsible for cooperation with radio and television in Ho Chi Minh City, a position he occupied from 1993 to 1998.

From 1998 to 2000, he travelled back to France aboard a Chinese junk christened Sao Mai and specially built for the journey, with Marielle Laheurte and a team of 30 volunteers from widely differing backgrounds (including the former naval lieutenant Pierre Guillaume, also known as Crabe-Tambour).

From 2001 to 2003, alongside senior reporter Arnaud de la Grange, he organised a circumnavigation of Africa with 12 well-known writers including Erik Orsenna, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio and Jean-Christophe Rufin.

In 2010, he produced a documentary series in four episodes for France Télévisions on the Tara Oceans mission, co-written with Thierry Ragobert and Frédéric Lossignol and with original music by Gérard Cohen-Tannugi.

[2][3] This was the first film produced during a four-year collaboration which also gave birth to three new feature-length documentaries with Yann Arthus-Bertrand: Méditerranée[4] in 2013, which looks at the development of human civilisations in the Mediterranean basin, with the voice of Gérard Darmon and Hiam Abbass ; Algérie, an emotional journey to the heart of Algeria, narrated by Jalil Lespert.