Giving it all up to change your life – Episode 1 | M6 | Zone Interdite

These French families have decided to change their lives. In a neighbouring country or at the other end of the world, with a professional project or driven by a passion, on dry land or upon the high seas… they have given it all up in order to start all over again.

Christelle, a salaries administrator with the SNCF, and her husband, Yann, a team leader with rail safety, have been dreaming for years of swapping their routine life under the grey skies of Lyon for adventure and coconut palms. Now their two daughters are bigger (10 and 7), they are taking this radical change of direction by taking over a beachside restaurant in Martinique. 3,000 square feet at the water’s edge, a little corner of paradise! An adventure with a capital A: their first service is scheduled just two days after they land.… Although Christelle ran a bar a long time ago, just a few months back, Yann was barely able to peel a potato. Fortunately, they are taking a couple of colleagues along with them: Maud and Cedric, who was a cook when younger. Successfully manage their children’s integration, learn a new trade, work with friends… plenty of challenges await them on the far side of the Atlantic. But they have no idea that a twist of fate threatens to put a major question mark over the whole thing from the moment they arrive…

When they were made redundant a year ago, Christophe and Jordan saw it as an act of destiny. Neither of them saw themselves turning up to sign on for unemployment, look for another job and live with the anxiety created by bills. So they decided to fly far from Toulouse and settle in Ho-Chi-Minh City. This couple of forty-year-olds with an unshakeable enthusiasm sold everything in order to open automatic laundries in Vietnam. A destination they did not select by chance: Christophe came to meet the family of his father, who died four years ago. But this return to one’s roots does not promise to be plain sailing. Neither of them speaks any English and even less Vietnamese… Will reality dent their joyful love of life?

Thirty-year-old Parisians, Marie and Paul, are trying to provide a sense to their lives. After years in advertising, they are launching into humanitarian work. The couple are going to raise funds to finance a project they want to turn into concrete reality: bring electricity to a small school in a tiny, remote village in Casamance, in the southeast of Senegal. The idea is praiseworthy, but neither of them is an electrician… On the spot,  plenty of surprises may put the brakes on their project.

During our previous shoots, we followed the first steps taken by other intrepid families… We met Jean-Christophe and Aurore again. As technicians in a pharmaceutical’s laboratory, they lived a quiet life in Alsace with their 11 and 14-year-old sons. But, at age 47, Jean-Christophe had decided to make a teenage dream become a family reality: to sail around the world and live aboard a sailboat. He and his wife sold their house in order to fix up an old catamaran. We finally found them enjoying the sunshine of the Canary Islands after a long and perilous voyage. Right now they are enjoying their nomadic life upon the waves. But freedom comes with a price. Their boat has turned out to be quite unpredictable; making money while a nomad is a headache and, most important, their eldest son, now 17 has abandoned ship. Aurore and Jean-Christophe are going to do all they can to bring the family together again.

We accompanied these families on their crazy gamble. Next week, in a second episode, we again meet up with Christelle and Yann in Martinique, and we discover new stories that will lead us to Canada and Madagascar…