Silence: At the beginning of the film with Daniel O’Taille, a chilling story related to the Dutroux case.

What is it about? Astrid, the quiet 25-year-old wife of a famous lawyer, sees her family’s balance unravel as her children turn to seek justice.

Original news

Joachim Lafosse wrote the screenplay for the movie Un silence about the Hisel case. In the latter case, Victor Hisel, the former attorney for the parents of Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, killed by Marc Dutroux in 1996, was indicted in 2007 for possessing child pornography. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison. Another peculiarity of this case: Hisel’s son, Romain, stabbed his father several times in 2009 and seriously injured him. He could not bear that his father, who was a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in Belgium, himself had pedophilic tendencies. Director says:

“That’s because this news was about what each one of us does with shame, guilt and silence. When I found out that the lawyer for the parents of Julie and Melissa, the little girls who were victims of Marc Dutroux, was in turn condemned by the court. That we all found out in Belgium His son’s gesture, I immediately wanted to explore the tragic dimension of this story. As an author, whether he writes about loss of mind or silence, the question that always bothers me is how it can get there, how the drama is woven, how an 18-year-old can be brought to the unthinkable.”

“masked wolves”

Joachim Lafosse tells us another reason that led him to write this film: A Belgian and a teenager at the time of the Dutroux affair, watching the White March, I could not help thinking that among the 400,000 people who would say “Never” in the streets of Brussels, there must be a few masked wolves. Twenty years later, when I discovered the Hisel affair, I thought there was something about it that marked the transition from a fear of isolated perversion, of a monster out of the woods, to a populist belief in sanctity. A commendable interrogation of what goes on in the hearts and bedrooms of our families.”

find a home

Silence was filmed in Metz. One of the things that kept Joachim Lafosse and his team the most was finding a home. “It had to be big enough to move heavy equipment and not be boring. It’s a provincial bourgeoisie where nothing costs more than two cents. Finding this house was one of the main elements of making the film.”The director recalls.

casting side

For the role of Astrid, the wife of a famous lawyer, Joachim Lafosse chose Emmanuelle DeVos: “We realized that the task of making Astrid, the mother character, was a risky one. We really had to bring to life a woman who had been silent for more than thirty years. In our eyes, she is a great narcissistic weakness. There is an archaic crack in her. We were just trying to help Emmanuelle and me, to surprise us. , let us hear, feel our failure, our cowardice, our fear, our bourgeois inability to lose, to risk the established order.

“We tried to follow his journey without judgment and get to the truth of it, knowing that there are many truths: the truth of the court, the truth of journalism, and then the truth of the creatures in their complexity.” From this point of view, it seemed incredible to us. Don’t go to court, because Astrid and Raphael might get their dignity back through justice.The director confides.

In addition, the role of François intimidated many actors according to Joachim Lafosse: “Daniel O’Teil He took it with great courage. During our first meeting, he told me: “I will try to bring the character to life without any judgment. I can play because, in my eyes, promiscuity is a defense mechanism – it’s the worst, but it’s one thing. François is a man who struggles without us knowing. He is a man who cannot face the truth or he will crumble.

In Son’s Skin, Mathieu Gallois finds his first role in front of the camera.

choice of staging

Joachim Lafosse and cinematographer Jean-Francois Hensgens tried to avoid “To feel” Staging. The filmmaker says: The story had to move forward slowly, the camera had to move, but we couldn’t feel his movements. So everything was shot in Dolly, which to me is more subtle than Steadycam, less flashy. I’m thinking, by the way, of the cinema of Claude Chabrol).

“Silence is one of the films that required the most rigor and rigor from me. No matter how it looked, the slightest extra movement was unacceptable, it had to be deleted. It was also about avoiding frame/reverse as much as possible. Shooting as well as diving and counter-diving. Never take High view, never be overshadowed.”