27/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: We met with the Belgian directors to discuss their first feature film, which paints a subtle yet intense portrait of a morning spent in court by a mother

Directors Arnaud Dufeys (© Monica Monté) and Charlotte Devillers (© Céline Nieszawer)

We Believe You [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte…
film profile] follows a mother on the go who’s spending a morning in court where she’s waiting for a hearing which will result in a ruling on her aptitude as a mother. Directed by Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte Devillers, and awarded a Special Jury Mention in the 75th Berlinale’s Perspectives section, the film is a subtle yet intense work which leaves plenty of time for the voices of, but also for listening to, the victims of family-based abuse.

Cineuropa: What’s at the heart of this film, in your view?
Arnaud Dufeys: The justice system as experienced by a mother who seems quite dysfunctional to begin with, who’s been caught up in a tangle of different court cases for years, which have destroyed the family unit. Over the course of a hearing which lasts the entire morning, we wanted to show her gradually re-appropriating her own voice, as well as her role as a mother.

We get the feeling that you’re giving Alice back a voice which has been used against her until now.
Charlotte Devillers: This voice helps her to understand and move forwards, to take back her place. It was important to us to leave her plenty of time, so that we could hear her.

AD: And also to show a kind of justice where there’s hope, even though these proceedings are long and repetitive. They’re places where people constantly relive their traumas. We wanted to depict a positive example, made possible by the fact that the judge has a progressive attitude; she wants to let her talk for as long as she needs to, until she pronounces the final word. She won’t allow the mother to be interrupted.

By contrast, there’s a lot of hesitancy around children’s voices, as if they want to spare them from having to repeat themselves.
CD: We wondered how people view children’s voices in our societies today, how do we listen to them? It’s a system where we only listen to adults, that’s what we wanted to stress. Keeping children off-camera is also a way of showing that people are talking about them, over them, in their place, but also that we don’t believe them.  We don’t hear them very often or even at all. But they’re called youth courts! The other thing, when it comes to children, is that the abuse tends to be so sensorial that words aren’t enough to describe the experience.

You’ve opted for a 4/3 format, with close-ups on faces, which leaves a lot of room for speaking, but this often takes place off-camera; we tend to see people listening.
CD: Hearing people was just as important as people using their voices. We wanted to show the questions and doubts of the people listening.

AD: It also allows us to hold up a mirror to the audience. It’s when we’re watching characters listening that we can really get inside their thoughts. Are they rejecting what they’re hearing or are they accepting it? We wanted there to be time to observe. We knew that Alice would speak last. As she was our main character, we had to heighten the tension surrounding her.

At the end of the film, you remind us of the statistics; it’s a fiction film but it’s fuelled by reality, a whole range of situations. Why did you choose this particular point in the victims’ journey?
CD: Alice is a mix of the different situations we came across, blending the staggering slowness of the legal system with the burning need to have to seize that particular moment in time, which everything rests on and where anything can change.

You haven’t opted to make a sensational film about criminal proceedings. It’s an everyday kind of justice that you focus on.
AD: Yes, it’s definitely a matter of everyday life, and it’s also a way of saying that there are so many people involved, and of showing how everyone has to keep rubbing shoulders with one another, in such close proximity, for the entire duration of the proceedings. They’re all sat next to one another in the judge’s chambers. We wanted to move away from the usual depictions we see of courts. There’s far more out there than the Palais de Justice. Justice mostly takes place in offices.

(Translated from French)