ZDFE.factual is one of the four genre departments of ZDF Enterprises.

ZDFE.factual’s full-service offer covers every step in the exploitation chain of successful TV productions, from the genesis and content development to production, and from the sales of TV licenses to merchandi-sing rights, online rights and much more.

The multifaceted programs we sell and distribute range from biographies of prominent personalities and appealing nature documentaries to solidly researched contemporary-history series and exciting “factual series” made by internationally renowned documentary producers – you’ll find everything you need for every audience and every time slot! Next to stand-alone programs and miniseries, you’ll find comprehensive, long-running series on the most varied subjects.

Another major sphere of activity as established co-producers and co-financers with many years of international experience lies in developing, identifying and initiating top-quality programs and exciting new concepts that interest partners in Germany and abroad, as well as the brokering and negotiation of coproduction projects.

Nutopia is a world leading television production company with offices in both the US and UK. Founded in 2008 by Jane Root, former President of Discovery US, Nutopia‘s projects to date include the Emmy- winning 12-hour series AMERICA STORY OF US, which brought critical acclaim and record audiences to the History Channel US, and became the highest rated and most watched special ever for the network; THE BRITISH for Sky Atlantic, a series that brings the danger, struggle, and heroism of Britain’s history to life; MANKIND THE STORY OF ALL OF US for History, which is the story of how we built our world; HOW WE INVENTED THE WORLD for Discovery features our most iconic inventions and modern-age break-throughs; National Geographic’s THE 80s: THE DECADE THAT MADE US, about the era that helped shape our modern culture; TARGETING BIN LADEN, for History and Channel 4, which featured the first ever documentary interview with President Barack Obama on the killing of the Al Qaeda leader.

ZDF Enterprises was founded in the year 1993 as a 100 % private subsidiary of ZDF, one of the biggest and most renowned television broadcasters in Europe. On behalf of ZDF, ZDF Enterprises is responsible for worldwide program sales, the implementation of international coproductions, license purchasing for quality programs, marketing online rights and the merchandising of strong ZDF program brands.

02

From the makers of MANKIND: THE STORY OF ALL OF US and AMERICA: THE STORY OF US.

EUROPE: THE STORY OF US is a television event that tells the story of our continent in an exciting new way – that is relevant to every European today.

Bold, visual, and entertaining – at the heart of this series is a big idea: by taking away the national borders of Europe, we uncover a compelling new story of the huge cultural, historical and geographical fault lines that have shaped the continent and all of its people from the Ice Age to the present day.

The episodes are broadly chronological, structured around 8 key conflicts that have shaped the story of Europe. Each is a story of dynamic struggle, competition and connections that have given the continent its character, revealing how and why its people have shaped the world like no other.

EUROPE THE STORY OF US

8 x 50‘/4 x 50‘ HD

03

1. MAN VS NATURE From Ice Age settlers to first farmers and trading cities, the struggle to master land and sea lays the roots of new worlds.

2. CITIZENS VS BARBARIANS From North and South, a clash of cultures drives innovation and new ideas, and gives the world its first megacity: Rome.

3. THE CRESCENT VS THE CROSS From Islamic Spain to the fall of Constantinople, a competitive

Europe is born out of the rivalry between two great religions.

4. RITUAL VS REBELLION Ideological ferment tears Europe apart, driving innovation

as pioneers look for new riches in an age of exploration.

5. SCIENCE VS SUPERSTITION New ways of seeing the world bring revolutions in science,

agriculture, trade – and to the streets of Europe’s cities.

6. THE FARM VS THE FACTORY Industry opens fault lines between East, West, North and South,

creating new connections across Europe and the world.

7. EMPIRES VS NATIONS Old Regimes versus the new power of the people create

new nations, new ideologies – and two world wars.

8. EAST VS WEST From the Iron Curtain to the fall of the Berlin Wall, through

innovation and conflict, a new united Europe struggles into being.

04

Using high quality drama, we’ll tell these big stories through intense dramatic moments, radical turning points and compelling characters who made a difference. We’ll see Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens competing for resources; Germanic warriors halting Rome’s legions in the Teutoburg Forest; religious rebels in Poland, the Hussites, pioneering a new weapon – the gun; Fritz Harber risking his life to produce a fertilizer which today helps to feed 2 in 5 Europeans; resisting the Nazis, the Finnish improvise a bomb that will arm the powerless around the world – the Molotov Cocktail.

Astonishing CGI sequences push us through time as ancient seas create layers of salt 50 metres thick and define the first trade routes. We’ll see the great monuments of Rome rise, and fly through landscapes transformed by industry.

Our stories will be anchored by Europe’s foremost historians and thinkers. Alongside them, we’ll hear from an ensemble of Europe’s best-loved faces from sport, screen and politics, telling us what excites them about our shared history (we also envisage tailor-made reversions for different territories, with their own well-known faces).

In each episode, great moments from different nations’ histories will be revealed in a new light, showing their relevance to the entire continent today: surprising stories from across the continent, from Turkey to Finland, and from Portugal to Hungary.

In telling our stories, we’ll see how Europe’s geography creates unique creativity and productivity. A coastline as long as the equator and criss-crossing rivers encourage trade and connections. When Asia took a year to cross, this was a continent that could be crossed in weeks. Natural barriers – mountains and marshes – prevent a single dominant state, but mean contact amongst diverse peoples, promoting the spread of ideas as well as intense competition: the origins of a civilization that has given the world its prevailing languages, cultures, political systems and business models.

This is the real story of Europe: not Kings and Queens, but dramatic human stories that reveal the underlying forces – technology and innovation, ideas and inspiration, geography and riches – that have shaped the lives of its people to the present day.

05

#01 MAN VS NATURE

SAMPLE EPISODES:

EPISODE 01: MAN VS NATURE In this episode, we reveal how the challenges posed by Europe’s unique geography drive mankind’s story in new directions, altering the destiny of the entire world.

40,000 years ago, as a mile-high glacier retreats to reveal a rich new world – Europe – we’ll see homo sapiens take his first footsteps in this newly habitable landscape. It’s the richest and most diverse home we’ll ever discover: fertile plains, dense forests, natural defences and a latticework of rivers for transport. But this is already the domain of a rival species. We’ll see the first face-off between Neanderthals and Humans (Europe is the only place on Earth where this encounter happens) and we’ll reveal that the ultimate victors in this battle-of-the-ape-men, were far from a foregone conclusion.

In our new home, we develop a distinct European culture – from primitive carvings to cave paintings to giant stone megaliths. This is the environment that allows man to develop faster than ever before. The challenges of Europe’s landscape mean that technologies developed in Africa and the Middle East now go into overdrive: farming, iron production… and trade. A dishevelled Celtic miner appears from a hole in the ground in Hallein, at the foothills of the Alps, carrying “white gold” – common salt. This place will become Salzburg, and “salt roads” will form the World’s first intercontinental trade network.

Then, from an island in the middle of a benevolent sea, with ready access to Europe’s extraordinarily long coastline, the Minoans use their geographical location to become the greatest traders the planet has yet seen. The Mediterranean’s calm waters are a key factor in the development of European society, and it’s the Minoans who learn that trade is improved when any two places are linked by water. Trade allows them to develop an unusually ritualised society, as we see them performing strange practices as diverse as bull leaping and human sacrifice. They comprise Europe’s first civilization and the most advanced the world has seen till now.

07

#02 CITIZENS VS BARBARIANS

EPISODE 02: CITIZENS VS BARBARIANSIn this episode, we’ll see how Europe’s very contours drive civilization into fast-forward until a new fault line between citizens and barbarians emerges. But when Roman and Germanic civilizations merge, they create a new Europe... and a way of life that will be exported around the world.

We join the metal workers of Cyprus who are taking us from Bronze to Iron Age Europe and opening up a vast untapped source of metal. They are experimenting with the rusty red mineral that litters their landscape using a new super-hot fuel – charcoal. Their ingenuity is rewarded as globules of red hot iron begin to coagulate in the furnace. We see larger, stronger and sharper weapons being hammered and stockpiled. These weapons will revolutionize the history of Europe’s cradle of civilization: Greece.

The geography of the Greek peninsula lends itself to a new form of settlement that still influences us today. High mountains carve out spaces for small, stable political entities: city states. They compete fiercely – as exemplified in our recreation of ancient Olympic Games. And their rivalry drives innovation in a way never seen before.

When the citizens of Athens run into battle with a colossal force of Persian invaders, they’re driven by the knowledge that they’ve voted for the war, through a new political system that will inspire the world – democracy. But it’s another European city that will use perpetual war with its neighbours to achieve previously undreamt-of advances: Rome.

We’ll see how in 458 BC Rome’s citizens vote into power a dictator who arms every man and boy who can lift a weapon to defeat their enemy, the Sabines, laying the foundations for the city republic to become a continent spanning empire. The dictates of war lead to new innovations from taxation to aqueducts. We’ll show how ash from the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius is used to create a new building material that shapes the Empire – concrete. But by the 4th century a fault line opens up that will power Europe’s history for centuries. In the Teutoburg forest, Arminus draws 12,000 legionaries into a carefully sprung trap – as fierce German tribesmen lie in wait behind a secretly constructed wall.

As the Huns sack Rome, the rise of barbarians ends classical civilization… but in Visigoth Spain we see the melding of Roman and ‘barbarian’ civilizations to create a new Europe. Infamous Norseman Ragnar Lodbrok navigates the entire continent, and the Vikings widen the boarders of Europe – founding Dublin as a slave market to the west and even the city of Moscow to the east. The old roads of the Roman Empire are used to spread not imperial armies but a religion – Christianity – which unites this new Europe.

09

#03 THE CRESCENT VS THE CROSS

EPISODE 3: THE CRESCENT VS THE CROSS

Christianity’s domination of Europe gives rise to a new phenomenon – the Christian knight at arms. And when these warriors come together to confront a new perceived threat to the south, we’ll show how the continent’s medieval history comes to be driven by the dynamic encounter between Christianity and Islam.

A young St. Patrick is kidnapped by Irish pirates at sea and enslaved for six years. His experience makes him a devout believer and we witness the drama of his escape from enslavement and his missions to convert pagan Ireland to Christianity. Now, across Europe, monasteries become hubs of agriculture, trade and learning. But Christianity also has a violent side – personified by the Christian knight.

We witness the genesis of the Christian knights and their distinctive cavalry charge at the Battle of Tours, as we join Frankish ruler Charles Martel, halting an attempt by the rich and diverse society of Islamic Spain to conquer the European heartland. It’s a landmark victory that decides the religious, and even the social future of Europe.

Expensively appointed on giant armoured horses, European society will now be remoulded around the Christian knights’ military needs – from the castles that appear in the landscape to the serfs who farm the land in their shadows. But when these warlike knights begin marauding out of control across Europe, the Pope sends them on a mission against the Islamic Caliphate at the city of Jerusalem. During the Crusades, a new dynamic tension between the two great religions, born of the conflict, will revitalise European society.

As Christians return to Europe with Islamic wealth and exciting new products, it‘s Islamic science and learning that shape Medieval Europe. We’ll show how Europe’s great gothic cathedrals are influenced by Islamic architectural ideas. In this reinvigorated Europe, families like the Medici embody Europe’s distinctive catalyst for change... competition. As they turn themselves from wool combers to the most powerful bankers in Europe, we’ll show how, effectively and ruthlessly, they run the world’s first multinational corporation.

The spectacular fall of Constantinople to the Islamic sultan Mehmet II means that European merchants must seek new routes to the East to get their hands on oriental luxuries... and so Christopher Columbus sets sail across the Atlantic in search of China. His contact with the New World will result in an exchange of people, culture, food, resources and disease that puts Europe at the centre of the world.

11

#04 RITUAL VS REBELLION

EPISODE 4: RITUAL VS REBELLION

Unprecedented climate change and horrific disease bring new deprivations to the people of Europe, encouraging them to rise up against traditional authorities bolstered by the Catholic Church and its rituals of salvation. A new invention challenges the Church’s authority, leading to some of the bloodiest battles in history to be fought on European soil. But from internecine conflict emerges great art.

From the 14th century, climate change initiates a rise of the power of the people. Storms and floods devastate Northern Europe and tens of thousands starve to death. For those who survive the famine of 1316, their immune systems are weakened to disease. Now the Black Death kills a third of Europe’s population... but desperation breeds dissent.

Peasants in the districts around Paris sense that aristocratic rule has weakened and spontaneously rise up in a mass rebellion. The “Jacquerie“ is named after “Jacques“ – a common name among French peasants. Although the social hierarchy of Europe is buttressed by the Catholic Church and its comforting rituals of salvation, now tens of thousands conclude that the Church has failed their spiritual needs. Amongst exotic new forms of religious observance we see flagellants on pilgrimage across the continent. In Eastern Europe, an army of militant Hussites see themselves as the servants of God battling the forces of the Devil in the Church and the Holy Roman Emperor. They defeat the Emperor’s knights by introducing a new weapon to the battlefield – the handgun. However, it’s a very different invention that will truly challenge the power of the Church.

In a secret workshop away from prying eyes outside the city walls of Strasbourg, a mysterious man is tinkering with molten metals. Once Johannes Gutenberg per-fects movable-type printing, Bibles will be produced in such numbers – and be read by so many – that they’ll spark a movement to reform the Catholic Church. As this new ideological divide – the Reformation – falls across Europe – we’ll join Florian Geier, a knight from Giebelstadt, who’s joined a peasant uprising in outrage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Only Martin Luther’s intervention quells the rebellion – after the deaths of 100,000 peasants.

Against the backdrop of upheaval and bloodshed in Reformation Europe, we join Michelangelo as he overcomes the engineering challenges of the most ambitious construction job to date – St Peter’s Basilica. It’s the crowning glory in an outpouring of great works of religious art and architecture that will reaffirm the strength of the Catholic Church.

13

#05 SCIENCE VS SUPERSTITION

EPISODE 5: SCIENCE VS SUPERSTITION

Europe’s familiar nation states begin to form, but we approach the period from a different angle, exploring how Europe’s scientists take on the forces of superstition to arrive at the principles on which all the modern countries of Europe are built – clearing the decks for the continent’s merchants to lead the way.

We open with the secret delivery of a cadaver to a young Leonardo Da Vinci. His experimental dissections form the basis of astonishing anatomical drawings; but when the Church discovers them, it accuses him of necromancy. It’s this battle between the forces of science and superstition that will define an emerging modern Europe.

As nascent nation states employ destructive new ways of waging war in the name of religion – we’ll camp with Count Ernst von Mansfeld, a famous mercenary for hire in the Thirty Years War whose billeting troops devastate the Rhineland – a witchcraft craze is gripping the continent. At a Loudun nunnery, a plot to have the Grandier accused of witchcraft has spiralled out of control and the nuns have fallen prey to mania and insanity. But European intellectuals are setting about unlocking the secrets of nature. We’ll find Galileo experimenting with new ways to see the world, through his invention, the telescope – before the Inquisition puts him on trial for heresy. And Isaac Newton in his secret alchemy lab in Cambridge presses needles behind his eyeballs to understand the secrets of vision.

Soon, scientific advances start to benefit ordinary people. Self-taught engineer Jan Leegwater clings for his life to the sail of a giant windmill in a raging North Sea storm, to realise his revolutionary idea of reclaiming land from the sea using wind power. From a lake he creates 7,000 acres of farmland and sows the seeds of an agricultural revolution. But it’s merchants who are really empowered to thrive. New technologies, from standardized currency to receipt papers, make it easier to buy and sell products.

The engineering marvel of the Canal Du Midi, built by an army of 12,000 men, finally gives France the means to trade its glut of grain, silk, wine and wool. A young carpenter, John Harrison answers the call to produce a new breed of pendulum clock that revolutionises navigation. And in the Dutch Republic, admired by Enlightenment thinkers and where income determines social status, a new urban merchant class devoted to making money dominates. But as we join the merchant adventurers of the Dutch East India Company, sailing for Indonesia bristling with weapons, a new sense of European superiority is laying the foundations for a new European development – the age of colonialism.

#06 THE FARM VS THE FACTORY

EPISODE 6: THE FARM VS THE FACTORY

A way of life that’s dominated Europe for centuries is challenged as machines change both rural and urban modes of production. Indus-trialization opens new fault lines between East and West, North and South, but also creates new connections across Europe and the world.

At the start of the 18th century, Europe’s aristocracy rules by dint of their control of the land and wealth from farming. One symbol of their control is the aristocratic Grand Tour, in which the heirs of Europe’s leading families visit the continent’s greatest cities, often in decadent fashion. In Paris we find Casanova on his Grand Tour, on the run from local gendarmes for his various liaisons. But a new fault line is about to open up across the continent that will shake the foundations of aristocratic control.

At a coal mine in Tipton, England, a deep rumble rises from the earth when suddenly a mountain of water erupts from below. This is the work of James Watt’s revolutionary new steam engine which will drain mines across Britain and put the fuel of the Industrial Revolution within reach.

The supply of coal facilitates the mechanization of the textile industries. As factories are thrown up, we join French spy John Holker, as he makes a cloak and dagger tour of the mills of Lancashire in order to take their secrets back to his masters across the Channel. The destruction of Richard Arkwright’s factory by Luddite Rioters defines Europe’s latest fault line – as peasants across Europe leave the land and swell the populations of new cities. Here they have a new master – not an aristocrat, but the time clock.

And the landscape of Europe is further changed: a desperate new need to transport raw materials inspires intense competition between a new generation of engineers. From William Hedley’s Puffing Billy to George Stephenson’s first long distance railroad, we see the materials and products of industry flowing around the new trade arteries of Europe.

Those who farm the land are emboldened to challenge the status quo. We’ll depict the French Revolution from the perspective of a peasant at the gates of Versailles, fighting for the end of feudalism and the abolition of the privileges of noble birth. This national revolution will inspire ordinary people across Europe and the world. But soon, Revolution turns to Terror, with industrialised executions by guillotine, and some leading industrialists, themselves aristocrats, must make daring escapes. Marc Isambard Brunel flees Paris in disguise with forged papers – in Britain he’ll redesign shipping for a new age and father an even more famous son – Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Another Parisian, Pierre Du Pont, must pose as a Revolutionary to escape. In America he’ll open a gunpowder factory and revolutionise the chemical industry.

17

#07 EMPIRES VS NATIONS

EPISODE 7: EMPIRES VS NATIONS

Europe’s old empires crumble in the face of new movements towards nation states... which themselves begin to collect vast new empires outside Europe. Soon, however, European nation states must face the rise of people power, new ideologies, dangerous new alliances – and global war.

The rise of nationalism sees old regimes like the Habsburg Empire crumble and Europeans formerly loyal to region, lord or prince taking on new identities, as states like Germany or Italy take their place. Newfound political stability leads new European states to seek colonies outside Europe. These new empires demand steel for railway tracks and weapons. We see Carl Siemens developing the regenerative furnace – the key to strong, cheap steel. We find French scientist Pierre-Joseph Pelletier collecting bark from South Ameri-can trees – for the quinine that will combat malaria and allow Europeans to conquer Africa. In Germany, Carl Friedrich Gauss is laying a cable across the Göttingen skyline – about to transmit the first telegraph message, which will enable the monitoring of imperial possessions.

The demands of empire drive new technologies – and Europeans need to find new ways to master distance. Karl Benz uses the Paris–Rouen rally to showcase his new creation, immediately spawning an obsession with the automobile that will define personal travel forever. Buffeted by a storm, a 20 year old Guglielmo Marconi struggles to build a “storm alarm” from a battery, a coherer, and an electric bell – the advance that will lead him to create the first radio transmitter. But wireless communication is bad news for the murderer Dr. Hawley Crippin, who’s stowed away on a ship bound for Canada after evading capture in England. When he’s recognized, he becomes the first criminal apprehended over the airwaves. And as aviators scramble for the skies, we join Louis Blériot as his revolutionary bi-plane crosses the English Channel for the first time in history.

But the growing demands of empire see new national alliances emerge to protect overseas wealth that will draw Europeans into a global war. We’ll experience the First World War from the perspective of the combatant going over the top of a trench. We’ll discover how a new kind of weapon – gas – derived from Fritz Haber’s research, today produces fertilisers that feed billions. But the war to end all wars doesn’t. Through the murder of the Romanovs and the rise of Communism, through the Great Depression and the rise of nationalist demagogues – we’ll arrive in Poland at 4:45 on Sept 1, 1939, as Germany launches an immense Blitzkrieg offensive in Poland. It’s the start of the Second World War. Riding with mounted Polish cavalrymen, we’ll discover that they’re no match for the power of German tanks – the ultimate product of European imperial technological advances.

19

#08 EAST VS WEST

EPISODE 8: EAST VS WEST

In the final episode we show how the destruction of the Second World War in Europe drives technological developments that also benefit the whole world. Yet this war contains the seeds of an East-West split that drives the history of the continent for the next half century. Out of the devastating division of the Cold War, however, come new institutions built on a new understanding that Europeans can be at their strongest when most united.

From the battlefields of WWII, we’ll cross to occupied Warsaw, where Irena Sendler is working for the underground resistance group egota. Captured by the Gestapo, we join her comrades as they pull off a daring rescue attempt. She’s forced into hiding but not before saving the lives of some 2,500 Jewish children. In the field hospitals of Normandy we see first-hand the lifesaving properties of a new wonder drug – penicillin.

The D-Day landings see the Allies turn the tide against Germany, but the advance across Europe that follows also stops Soviet forces establishing control of the continent. Already, an East-West divide is driving Europe’s story. In the aftermath of the war, we’ll be on board the aircraft flying emergency missions into Berlin during Stalin’s Blockade, as he seeks to renegotiate the division of Germany, and we’ll be on the ground with families desperately trying to cross the city as the Berlin Wall is erected.

The need for each side to stay ahead during the Cold War drives innovations that keep Europe in the cockpit of a changing world. From German physicists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker working in Paris to turn German WW2 radar technology into the forerunners of transistors – kick-starting the drive towards computing; to blasting off with Uri Gagarin as he becomes the first man in space; to going undercover with Cold War spies like Vladimir Vetrov, a KGB man working at huge personal risk against the Soviets in France, to sabotage the efforts of other KGB agents to steal European technologies.

But as the Cold War between East and West in Europe gets hotter, we‘ll see how Europeans establish insti-tutions that seek to create a pan-European identity. Now the former Eastern Bloc countries can be brought into the European Union, that seeks to eradicate the dangerous East–West divide. And we’ll see high-speed rail projects being built, cutting across national boundaries and bringing people from opposite ends of the continent together at incredible speeds. In 1974 we go behind the scenes to witness a daring new experiment in live television. The Eurovision Song Contest makes ABBA overnight superstars. The cultural strength of Western Europe is one of the forces that leads to the Fall of the Berlin Wall – which we’ll film as if we’re at the heart of the exuberant crowds – as hands from the East meet hands from the West.

21

FINANCING PLAN ”EuropE – tHE Story of uS” (8 x 50‘/4 x 50‘ HD)

pEr EpS.

SOURCE TERRESTRIAL BROADCASTER / COPRO 1

TERRESTRIAL BROADCASTER / COPRO 2

PAY-TV BROADCASTER / TRANSNATIONAL / CO-FINANCING

PRESALE 1 (TV, VOD OR DVD)

PRESALE 2 (TV, VOD OR DVD)

FURTHER SALES

TOTAL

AMOUNT

350,000.00 EUR

250,000.00 EUR

150,000.00 EUR

60,000.00 EUR

50,000.00 EUR

25,000.00 EUR

885,000.00 EUR

%

40 %

28 %

17 %

7 %

6 %

3 %

100 %

for rEfErEncE uS$

for rEfErEncE uKSt

$1,230,150

£ 737,500

1.39

1.2

22

DVD

Teaser “Europe: The Story of Us” 1 episode “America: The Story of Us” 1 episode “Mankind: The Story of All of Us”

23

ZDf Enterprises GmbHZDfE.factualErich-Dombrowski-Str. 1D-55127 Mainz

t: + 49 . (0) 6131 . 991 - 1611f: + 49 . (0) 6131 . 991 - 2611E: zdfe.factual@zdf-enterprises.dewww.zdf-enterprises.de