21st century man has great questions to answer: the origins of the universe, the origins of life on Earth, and the origins of mankind. All three have stood the test of time.
Science is taking huge steps forward, but scientists are at a standstill when it comes to explaining the move to walking upright.
All sorts of assumptions about what happened between 9 and 5 million years ago remain plausible. The only near-certainty is that Africa is mankind’s birthplace, the starting point of various hominid lines which spread out with each successive migration. They scatter along a twisting, treacherous route, along which they meet with terrible climatic upheavals. Human beings then begin a slow adaptation to their environment: height, muscles, hair, faces evolve in a multi ethnic expansion which has provoked disagreement amongst generations of palaeontologists.

They have to make the fossils talk, to unlock the secret of a tiny trace of wear and tear, examine a miraculously discovered skull and get closer to our ancestors, face to face across the ages.

Elisabeth Daynes holds a special place in this search for our origins. An artist, an anthropological sculptor, renowned internationally, passionately committed to her task of recreating realistic hominids who lived over a period of several million years, from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens. She works closely with the most eminent scientists, and with new technologies which offer her exceptional computer imaging and computer-aided design tools. Recreating the face of a dead person, of someone who has gone missing, of a suspected criminal or of prehistoric man all use identical techniques. Elisabeth Daynes visits police labs with casts of skulls tucked under her arm (the originals never travel). A specialist uses very sophisticated 3D imaging software which enables him to specify the thickness of the "soft" parts of the face, between the bones and the surface of the skin. Back in her workshop, and armed with this data, she can start to sculpt our ancestor's face in clay.

Visitors to her "lair" in Belleville, in a traditional Parisian courtyard, a space filled with plaster masks, wigs and prostheses, get the impression that they are being watched by an Indian, a monster or an actor, props leftover from a play or special effects for a film which are also made in this workshop.

A Neanderthal face appears behind the bay window. It is still missing the lines and the grain of the skin. These are the last stages to be completed before the various steps of final silicone moulding and pulling. Then come the eyes, the teeth, the nails and the hair, placed hair by hair on the body. This work of art takes the artist and her assistants a period of a few months.

While they wait to leave, the dermoplasties make up an odd recomposed family, so realistic that its members seem to be taking part in some improbable conversation, in the showroom next to the workshop. Over time, one could meet the moving Homo georgicus couple, recognised as the oldest Europeans (1.7 million years) in 2001, next to their African cousin, the Turkana child, a 1.6 million year-old Kenyan.

As for the Australopithacus afarensis couple (of the same group as the famous Lucy), our artist worked on it for seven months, sculpting the two faces in the greatest secrecy at the University of Tel-Aviv, starting from fossils found in Ethiopia by Donald Johansson and professor Yoel Rak, which held the role of scientific adviser. Using Lucy's bones as the basis of the reconstruction of the body, Elisabeth Daynes worked on the gait and the musculature by observing the body-shapes and the behaviour of the bonobos in Antwerp's zoo. In 2004, the group will be joined by five other creations whose construction we will follow step by step, down to the smallest details, through to their installation in what will be Europe's finest science museum, in Barcelona.

Elisabeth Daynes' work, which mixes scientific research, technological innovation and art, will allow the public to see, in a very visual and accessible form, the synthesis of current knowledge on man's evolution. From documentary research to first sketches, the film will bear witness to the surprising intimacy which links the artist to her creations; it will help to understand what drives her to combine all of these different sciences, and how, through her doubts and questions, she highlights the contradictions inherent in the assumptions of specialists. Together, they tend towards a form of perfection. Coming face to face with our ancestors is both moving and the answer to our dreams.