02/02/2024 - Roda Fawaz and Thibaut Wohlfahrt thrust us into the heart of the justice system for a day, encompassing high-tension trials and family affairs

Roda Fawaz and Thibaut Wohlfahrt have unveiled their debut feature film, The Lost Steps, in a Belgian premiere at the Ostend Film Festival. The movie immerses the audience in a day in the life of a law court that’s located somewhere in Belgium. The lobby [Translator’s note: which translates as “the hall of lost steps” in French] in this publicly accessible building is where all those using the space cross paths, regardless of their role, their pay grade or their purpose. As if crushed by the weight of this institution, we soon feel tiny within the court’s grandiose architecture, where glass walls evoke the transparency and reparations required by justice.

At the beginning of the day, or rather in the middle of the night, a woman awakens. It’s 3.30am. She performs her morning rituals: drinking a coffee, listening to the radio. Suddenly, an alarm goes off. It’s the concierge at the law court and, on this particular day, the possibility of an intrusion is a bigger threat than ever. Today will mark the beginning of the trial of a terrorist responsible for the deaths of 13 people in a Brussels mosque. The wider history of the country and the individual history of its citizens will intertwine all day long. We’ll see the elusive terrorist whose unfathomable darkness is reflected in his absence, and his controversial lawyer; we’ll see the security guards who protect the murderer despite their own feelings on the matter, and those who lose themselves in personal problems, soon becoming grains of sand in this well-oiled machine. And then there are the others, life rolling on, family matters, which seem lost in the immensity of the Sisyphean task that is the delivery of justice.

There’s a whole universe within a law court and, faced with the gargantuan nature of the task in hand and the place itself, the directors linger on faces, scrutinising them, circling around them in order to detect the tiniest reaction. It’s a conglomerate of pain, suffering, hope, revolt and, potentially, new beginnings. A place which also embodies the bigger questions affecting our societies. The filmmakers take care to depict this system, which might seem ambitious in such a short space of time. This world presents a wide range of destinies: a homeless woman who’s reached the end of the road, a son overwhelmed by the needs of his bedridden father, a seventy-year-old who’s looking for another life... And Roda Fawaz and Thibaut Wohlfahrt have availed themselves of a wide cast of dazzling Belgian actors and actresses in order to convey these many sensitivities, notably including Véronique Dumont, Fatou Hane, Aurélien Caeyman, Laurent Capelluto and Wim Willaert.

The Lost Steps is produced by Frakas Productions (Belgium), together with RTBF, Proximus, Voo, Be TV, and the Tax Shelter initiative. The film enjoys support from the Lightweight Production Fund as organised by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre.

(Translated from French)