How did Angkor become the largest, 13th century city ever built? A spectacular archaeological investigation which renews our knowledge of the capital of the Khmer Empire, one hundred and fifty years after the discovery of its ruins.
Using the most sophisticated technologies in conjunction with research focusing on statues, casts, and documents handed down by Louis Delaporte - one of the first explorers of Angkor in the 19th century - researchers have been able to uncover how Khmer temples operated, the meaning of their architecture, and how to become the largest city in the world at the end of the 13th century.
"Imagine all the cathedrals of France gathered in a large forest." In Cambodia, the tropical forest has invaded the ancient Khmer capital, but the remains of the sanctuaries erected by successive sovereigns, between the 8th century and the abandonment of Angkor in 1431, bear witness to its past influence. How was the city born and developed to become the largest city ever built in the 13th century? Nearly one hundred and fifty years after their discovery, its moving and spectacular ruins are just beginning to reveal their secrets. Thanks to a revolutionary laser, scientists have managed to record the footprints left by disappeared buildings, and to reconstruct the topography of the place and the waves of expansion of the city. But it is to a French archaeologist that we owe the resolution of a stubborn enigma: by studying the site of Koh Ker, where the capital was moved during a twenty-year hiatus, Eric Bourdonneau lifted the veil on the functioning of temples, the meaning of their architecture and their statuary, dominated by representations of the gods Shiva and Yama. Funerary monuments, these constructions were intended to prepare the passage of Khmer kings into the afterlife. A theory confirmed by the statues and casts committed by Louis Delaporte – one of the first explorers of the Cambodian city – and exhumed from the cellar of the abbey of Saint-Riquier, in the Bay of Somme, by Pierre Baptiste, curator at the Guimet museum. For his part, guided by the discovery of a sacred tree trunk at Angkor Thom, the archaeologist Jacques Gaucher have identified the historical, political and religious center of the empire.
Captivating from start to finish, Angkor Rediscovered offers an overview of the latest scientific advances by retracing the steps which led French archaeologists to unravel the mysteries of the sleeping city. The documentary thus highlights the fundamental role of the drawings and casts brought back by Louis Delaporte for current research. Preserved in France, these treasures appear all the more priceless as a fungus inexorably alters the sandstone of the Angkor monuments, threatening, in the long term, to swallow up the secrets of Khmer civilization forever.

Written & Directed by Frederic Wilner ; A Co-Production by ARTE France, Iliad Productions, RSI, Les films de l'Odyssee and Le Musee Guimet with Planete+ and CNC