This might be an odd request. Please redirect me if it shouldn't be here. I'm making an audio course on art discovery. I believe teaching through stories is much better than stating facts or telling the student a view. So I'm looking to start my audio course on why anyone should go looking for art (or simply new ideas). But I want to communicate this answer with a dark (not scary, or dreary, but cunning - like the antagonist has a trick up his sleeve) non-fiction story with a tone a la Assassin's Creed Unity, 2, 3, 4 - the one set during the French revolution. I'm composing music similar in tone to that. + The Red and The Black (simply a stylistic choice).

I'm looking for a real story that sends a particular message which is this:

"A child never writes his own alphabet" - Jacque Fresco

"You can't exceed your environment. If you give a cannibal a watch, he doesn't look at it and say "the gears are not precise, they are ten thousandth of an inch off" He doesn't say that. It's impossible. That's what I mean by you can't exceed your environment. You can't exceed what you've been exposed to." - Fresco

This most effectively summarizes my perspective.

Basically the message I want to send is: the more ideas (art, music, etc.) you expose yourself to, the better you will be (because you will then be able to conceive of newer heights (which are subjective) you couldn't previously conceive of and you can then climb through practice and honing technical skill. In addition to that, you'll know how to surpass your influences by doing the opposite of shutting yourself off from the world - instead you look for more influences to refine your taste and climb past existing influences. But technical skill on its own is nothing compared to exposure to new ideas.)

Preferably the story is in Europe/France, and is somewhat dark and eerily moving.

As Robert McKee once said “If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.”

To clarify further my definition of story: a person is obsessed with a certain thing they want, but antagonists stand in their way of getting that thing. Goal and ambition + conflict.

I know it's a pretty specific strange request, but I'm hoping someone out there is aware of a story like that.