A father and his son leave in quest of Zero, a most weird figure. Indeed, Zero fascinates as much as it worries and disturbs.
The two characters are going to involve us in their journey, an erudite investigation that will lead us into the past and hence throughout the world and throughout time. Around Zero – an essential concept for the development of mathematical thought – the world of Science lived through centuries of controversies and fights.
We will thus follow Zero from the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world to India and from Central Asia to Bagdad and the Islamic world, from the Maghreb to Andalusia and Western Europe.
“Zero!”, the first co-production between Tunisia and India. “Zero!” was supported by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, the Indian Ministry of External Relations and the Agence Internationale de la Francophonie. This project is also an example of a successful cultural sponsorship with the entry of the company VERMEG of Badreddine OUALI and Noureddine GASMI who helped finance the preparation of the film.
This documentary film revolves around the itinerary of a singular number, the number Zero. Behind Zero, as behind its no less disturbing counterpart Infinity, lie the fears and fundamental questions of humanity, about nothingness, emptiness, eternity and the infinity of space. Its entry into the world of ideas has therefore aroused many reservations, and it has only made its way, century after century, braving taboos and prohibitions that are sometimes deadly. It is throughout this chaotic but irrepressible advance that we will follow the Zero. In a century, our own, where the profound movements of the world raise the problems of multicultural societies and see societies stumbling over the need for integration, it is important to make known those periods of sharing, openness and respect which have fertilised the world of ideas and, conversely, those long periods of withdrawal, closure, rejection, or even inquisition where human thought has withered.
A revealing journey between East and West, between which the Zero will successively live hours of freedom and repression, because its history, far from being confined to the world of trade or speculations of logic, takes us to the heart of the great History, that of the societies which are established, radiate then decline. An exemplary journey which shows that science, and with it societies, progresses simply where and when the spirit blows the strongest and above all the most freely. (credit: Constance DUMONT MADEIRA PINTO)
