10/08/2024 - Claudia Marschal delivers an incredibly powerful and subtly directed film on the poignant subject of a sexual assault carried out by a priest on a young teenage boy

"It stirred up a volcano of anger, it re-opened an immense wound when I was minding my own business. That letter triggered a need for justice, a need to make my voice heard". Cases of sexual abuse of minors involving members of the Catholic church have already inspired the film world numerous times, first and foremost in the field of fiction (from Bad Education [+see also:
trailer
film profile] to Spotlight, without forgetting By the Grace of God [+see also:
film review
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Q&A: François Ozon
film profile]), so it’s far from easy to bring something new and respectful to the big screen around this incredibly sensitive subject. But it’s exactly this - thanks to her gifted approach to storytelling - that Claudia Marschal pulls off with The Deposition, the French director’s first feature-length documentary, unveiled within the Semaine de la Critique line-up of the 77th Locarno Film Festival.

"I would like you to concentrate and to tell me in as much detail as possible what exactly you say you were subjected to". We’re in a police station in 2021 and Emmanuel is quietly recording a deposition which takes him back to the end of the summer of 1993. He was 13 and he was visiting Father Hubert, the parish priest in his little Alsatian village of Courtavon. Hubert was a man he admired, who played guitar, who organised shows and camping trips, who encouraged him to dream about a possible humanitarian trip to India, and to whom he confided his adolescent angst, having been left to his own devices in the shadow of his mega-Catholic parents who were preoccupied with their restaurant business ("in my family, we don’t talk, we don’t listen, we don’t take time for one another, and then, all of a sudden, I had someone who listened to me").

For Emmanuel, it’s a deep dive into burning memories full of clarity ("I can remember his face perfectly, as if it were yesterday") and great vagueness ("I’ve got holes, it annoys me"), relating to a traumatic day which has profoundly impacted his entire existence ("I’ve been carrying it around since I was really young. I don’t trust people"). An event which torments his father Robert terribly - to whom the teen had, in fact, told everything at the time (along with his now deceased mother), without anything ever happening about it - who decides, 25 years later and of his own volition, to confront Father Hubert ("Father, what happened with my son, Emmanuel?"), but who still believes the latter’s denials, like the good Catholic boy he is. His father’s doubt is a cruel reality for Emmanuel (made worse by the shock of receiving a letter from the priest, suggesting that they meet) which triggers the victim’s desire to fully face up to the nightmares of his past, to overcome the fear of what people might say, to redefine his complicated relationship with faith (which he has since rediscovered with the help of evangelical Protestants) and to finally bring the case to court.

Opening one window onto his memory after another, Claudia Marschal crafts a particularly moving and edifying story, skilfully managing the chronology of the key event, the context of the past and the action which unfolds in the present. Divided into eight audio-based episodes of the deposition at the police station, interwoven with Emmanuel making contact with the Bishop of Strasbourg (who receives him and hears his story) and conversations with his sister and, primarily, his father, the film dissects its dramatic subject-matter with implacable precision, the latter enhanced by brilliant narrative inventiveness (with numerous family photos and videos depicting the protagonist’s childhood, where the film symbolically switches to animation) and the intensity of this abused former choir boy who is fuelled by a desire to heal but also boundless rage, but who is now an adult moving beyond his wounds and lifting the veil on this secret.

The Deposition was produced by Idéale Audience Group in co-production with Vosges TV, and is sold worldwide by Shellac.

(Translated from French)