Learners from the Top of the World

Jacques Malaterre is a French director who worked for over twelve years as a special education teacher before turning to filmmaking in 1989. Starting as a documentary filmmaker, he explored art, literature, society, and history through films shot across the world, including in China, where he spent six months in 1994 working on a project about Yaodong dwellings. From 1996, he moved into fiction, directing TV series and films. He gained international recognition with The Odyssey of the Species (2001), followed by Homo sapiens and The Rise of Man. Awarded the French Legion of Honour in 2011, he continued creating for television and theatre. In recent years, he developed The Last Secrets of Humankind, filmed in China (2021–2022), and published a book in 2024 recounting this Sino-French cinematic journey.