In recent days the country has been hit by widespread looting, violent clashes between rioters and police, street protests and just scenes of chaos and conflict.

And the fear is there’s more to come. Not just this weekend, but in the months ahead as we get closer to the presidential election next spring.

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We’ll unravel what happened, look ahead to what could still happen yet and explain some of the French protest slogans that have emerged in recent weeks.

And as well as the demonstrations and disorder on the streets France is also embroiled in a crisis of debt, the combination of which, experts say is unprecedented.

We’ll try and explain just how bad things are.

But despite all that, most of life in France is going on as normal this autumn, including some fantastic food festivals all over the country. We’ll give you a taste of the best ones.

Host Ben McPartland is joined by the team at The Local France Emma Pearson, Emma Albright and French politics expert John Lichfield.

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Welcome to a new episode of Talking France, a special episode it turns out, because we find ourselves in the midst of a new major protest movement in France.

This one is being led by high school students, who are fed up with the state of the education system and fear they don’t have much future ahead of them. Their movement, which has seen lycees blockaded, is supported by students, parents, teachers, unions and several political parties.

In the last week or so we’ve seen thousands of young people arrested, we’ve had hundreds of school students, education staff and police officers left injured as violence and vandalism has flared at flash points throughout the country.

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This week we’ve seen tens of thousands take to the streets in a mass demonstration as well as the president calling emergency meetings with his ministers.

This wasn’t meant to be a special episode but these student uprising has caught us by surprise and so we need to breakdown what’s going on, what’s caused it and find out where it’s heading.

To do that I’ll call on the team at The Local France Emma Pearson and Emma Albright, our French politics expert John Lichfield and as well as French education expert and author Peter Gumbel. I’m Ben McPartland your host.

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