Behind the scenes at Rungis | France 5 | Camera 5

Rungis, the “stomach of France” is a gigantic market as big as the principality of Monaco. Today it feeds a quarter of France’s population and more than 18 million Europeans, supplied by nearly 1300 wholesalers. Here every night prices go up and down like at the stock market. The “loud hawkers” have disappeared, replaced little by little by graduates from the major universities or young and inflexible young salesmen who have begun at the bottom of the ladder… But today, even if the atmosphere of the former Paris Les Halles market has disappeared, Rungis is brilliant under the thousand lights during the end of the year holiday season…. It’s at this period of the year that the sellers and their employers make business bets, hoping to hit the jackpot in a few days. During this period of intense activity clients become the prey who must be lured by any means… From “high tech” or “traditional” clients to international buyers creating culinary fashion, and including the police and sanitary surveillance brigades, the Camera 5 crews cover it all, presenting a colorful portrait behind the scenes of this mythical place, upon the eve of Christmas holidays.