“It’s a race against time”: the crazy bet of Léo Rivière, 19, in search of the last French veterans of the Second World War

With the death of Lazare Ponticelli in 2008, France buried its last furry friend. Nearly 20 years later, time is now running out for the last survivors of the Second World War. “There are only six members of Free France still alive and the veterans of the first army and the CEF (French Expeditionary Corps in Italy) are only a few hundred left”assures Léo Rivière. At 19 years old, this young passionate student of the period is filled with an urgency: to locate, meet and collect the testimony of these French heroes.

To save this heritage, the young man founded the association “They lived it” in 2025. After classes, Léo Rivière devotes his weekends (and his savings) to traveling across France, with tripod and telephone, to meet these centenarians. The format is always the same: a conversation, the story of a life, facing the camera. In two years, the young man filmed around twenty testimonies. Since then, three of them have…