Lto Quinzaine des cinéastes, parallel section of the Festivalgenerally dedicated to research cinema and new auteurs, opens today with an experienced filmmaker, Cédric Kahn – beginnings with Maurice Pialat, experiences as an actor and finally screenwriter and director of about fifteen works – and a tribunal film, a genre that is never lacking in festivals (at the last Venice Film Festival we saw the beautiful Saint Omer by Alice Diop).
Arieh Worthalter is Pierre Goldman.
The courtroom as a stage where history and extreme feelings are played out, where issues that very often go beyond the judicial case are debated. So it was for V13, the trial that concerned the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015in fact a collective analysis session, a cathartic moment, a great religious function.
A political process
The case of this film is the second trial that began in November 1975 against Pierre Goldman, far-left activist, sentenced to life in prison for four armed robberies, one of which resulted in the deaths of two pharmacists. Goldman claims his innocence regarding the latter affair and in a few weeks becomes the icon of the intellectual left.
Simone de Beauvoir sits in the audience in the courtroom. Georges Kiejman, a young lawyer, also Jewish, defends him. But defend Goldman, elusive and defiant, regardless of the fact that risks capital punishment, who indeed perhaps seeks in death a way out of his tragic and adventurous personal story, it’s almost impossible.
Arthur Harari is the defense attorney.
Kahn does not let himself be tempted by the off-screen, reconstructions, flashbacks and never leaves the courtroom. It starts from the book that Goldman published from prison, Souvenirs obscurs d’un Juif polonais né en Francealternating testimonies (the father, a heroic militant of the resistance, the revolutionary friend, the woman who loves him, but also all those present at the crime who recognize him as the murderer despite having an alibi), indictments and protagonist’s outburstsArieh Worthalterfeverish)talks to us about racism, police violence (a topic present in France today practically every day in the newspapers), politics, the nature of remembrance and complexity, perhaps the impossibility of doing justice.
“I wanted the viewer to put themselves in the shoes of a juror and be able to form their own opinion as the debate progressed. In the absence of evidence, and this is the case with the Goldman affair, only language remains. Language in the arena of a trial serves to fabricate points of view, convictions, and it’s mind-boggling! A process is a game of language, it is pure dialectic. The subject of this film is dialectics» declared the director.
Another Tribunal: Anatomie d’une chute
In two days the festival will return to a courtroom, and this time for a film in competition, Anatomies of a chute by Justine Triet. The screenplay is edited by Arthur Harari, also defense attorney of Le procès Goldman.
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED