July 1998. While France is celebrating its victory in the World Cup, another event is shaking the image of French sport. In Corrèze, stronghold of President Jacques Chirac, the triumphant reception of the Tour de France spirals into a global scandal. The Festina Affair erupts during a stage in Corrèze and plunges the Tour into turmoil.

In the heart of summer, the Festina team—one of the most powerful in the peloton—is expelled from the Tour. The arrest of its soigneur, Willy Voet, a few days earlier, had revealed the existence of systematic doping within the team. Just a few kilometers from the Château de Bity, the Chirac family’s estate—where they had arranged to host a stage—events quickly escalated. On July 18, in the back room of Chez Gillou, a simple village café, the organizers tried to avoid chaos by persuading the riders to withdraw. It would be in vain. The psychodrama played out in front of cameras from around the world.

This documentary revisits an episode that profoundly impacted cycling and, beyond that, professional sports as a whole. In Corrèze, where local politics and national ambitions collided, the much-anticipated celebration turned into a major crisis. The political cohabitation between Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin served as the backdrop, while the Minister of Sports, Marie-George Buffet, pushed forward the fight against doping.

Through the testimonies of direct witnesses—Willy Voet, the team’s soigneur and the man at the heart of the scandal, or Bruno Roussel, then director of the Festina team—this film tells how the Festina Affair shattered certainties, ruined careers, but also precipitated the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency.