21/12/2011

The 41st Rotterdam International Film Festival will open on January 25 with Lucas Belvaux’s latest film. Belvaux’s seventh film, 38 Witnesses (initially called One Night), thus follows on from Rapt [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lucas Belvaux
film profile], with both stories heavily inspired by real-life news items.

While Rapt was based on Baron Empain’s ordeal, 38 Witnesses (adapted from novelist-film director Didier Decoin’s book, “Is This the Way Women Die?”) refers to a news story that made the headlines in the US in the 1960s: the agony of a young woman, tortured and murdered in the middle of the night, under the gaze of 38 people who were desperately passive, blind, deaf and silent.

Up against the horror of what has been called “the bystander effect” or “Kitty Genovese syndrome” (named after the young murdered woman), Belvaux puts the character of Louise (played by Sophie Quinton). Away that night, she asks herself the question we would all ask ourselves: what would I have done in their position? This question is oddly complicated by the fact that her own husband, Pierre (Yvan Attal), who at first swore to her that he didn’t witness the murder, could well be among the 38 witnesses.

It is these questions, at the heart of a film that is “brilliantly written and directed”, “deeply moving and full of food for thought”, which appealed to Rotterdam festival director Rutger Wolfson.

38 Witnesses is produced by Patrick Sobelman for Agat Films, by Attal, and by Patrick Quinet for Artémis, a new Belgian partner for Belvaux whose works have up until now been co-produced by Entre Chien et Loup. The film received backing from the Film and Audiovisual Centre of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and the Tax Shelter fund. It is sold internationally by Films Distribution and will be released in France (Diaphana) and in Belgium (Cinéart) next March.

(Translated from French)