French helmer Dominik Moll asks some uncomfortable questions in his Cannes competition entry Case 137 [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], starring Léa Drucker. During a round-table interview at the festival, he delved deeper into his new film.

“I don’t feel at ease at protests, and I’m not a ‘regular demonstrator’. When I was prepping the film, I went on one demonstration with the police, and that was kind of strange. They put a helmet on my head and gave me shoulder protection, and I felt a bit stupid. But it also gave me an idea of what it’s like to be on the other side, where you wait for hours and suddenly everybody starts running, and you don’t even know why.”

He could identify with some of the police officers, he admits. “Not with those who have a clear problem with violence, but those who do crowd control during demonstrations, who are put in a difficult, complicated situation. During the Yellow Vest movement, they were told: ‘This is war. This is chaos. The country is in danger, and here are the riot guns and grenades.’ Of course they were going to use them. I’m not saying this to excuse individual behaviour that should be sanctioned and punished, but the real problem is with the hierarchy and the fact that the victims of that possible police violence are not being acknowledged as victims.” Even when they were seriously wounded.

Moll came across many odd, even absurd, details in his research. “That’s why it was so important to spend a few days with the IGPN [General Inspectorate of the National Police]. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made the film. One of the investigators told me that the BRI, which fights terrorists or intervenes during hostage situations, should never have been doing crowd control. They don’t know how! They were asked to join at the last minute, so they went to Decathlon and bought skater helmets. In one real-life case, they were identified precisely because of these Decathlon helmets.

“In France, they are really militarised. They are like robocops. When you look at demonstrations from 20 or 30 years ago, it’s like they’re walking around in T-shirts. It dehumanises them, and those riot guns are really dangerous. Police unions, the most far-right ones, ask for more weapons, and you get the sense that they are there to protect the people in power and not to serve the population.”

Moll has already talked about police investigations in The Night of the 12th [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]. Now, he’s showing the police investigating the police. “The IGPN has always fascinated me because nobody knows anything about it. Their colleagues despise them and feel they are traitors. The media say they don’t do their job. I asked myself: ‘Do they treat it seriously or just cover stuff up?’ And how do they do it while being criticised from all sides?

“Then there’s this whole question of bias. With Gilles Marchand, my fellow screenwriter, we went: ‘What if our investigator comes from the same town as the demonstrators?’ With the Yellow Vest movement, many people were of the same social origin as the police officers. They didn’t understand why they stopped them from seeing Macron.”

Drucker was his first choice for lead character Stéphanie. “I’ve never written a part for an actor or an actress, but during the writing process, I thought of her more and more. I’d worked with Léa ten years ago on News from Planet Mars [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]; it was a small part. Now, I even heard some of the dialogue in her voice.”

While continuing his collaboration with Marchand on the last two films, research and documentation were key. “Reading, meeting lawyers, victims, magistrates and journalists, going to the IGPN… It was clear that it would all be told from the point of view of an investigator, to get a nuanced and balanced view of the situation. We have also noticed the importance of images and videos from police CCTV or amateur smartphones, and how they find them and analyse them. But even an image is never objective – it all depends on who’s watching it.”

He fictionalised many things. “I met the mother of a boy who was wounded by one of the grenades. He lost his hand.” In the film, the demonstrator hurts his head. “She wasn’t very receptive. She asked: ‘Why is it told from the perspective of a police investigator?’ We met, and I told her we wouldn’t be using their story, but in the meantime, she’d talked to her children and decided it was still an opportunity to talk about the victims and police violence.”

In the film, Stéphanie hears from a witness: “You know it’s not going to change anything.” Moll was thinking about this as well. “It’s a real question: can films change something, or do they only appeal to those who agree with what’s being shown? I hope we will at least start a debate on what law enforcement during demonstrations is like and the things that should be changed. Our former president has been accused of corruption, and he claims he’s innocent. Why is it so difficult to admit a mistake? Everybody makes them. But even if the politicians don’t change their attitude, maybe those victims will see the film and think: ‘At least someone is showing an interest in our suffering’.”