Created in 2014, restorative justice is a space for dialogue that offers those involved suffering from the repercussions of the crime the possibility of meeting to question the “why” and the “how”.
Feature film directed by Jeanne Herry, “I will always see your faces” reveals these moments of encounters whose goal is to allow the victims to rebuild themselves and the aggressors to understand their actions. In the film, it is regarding violence, but also regarding the birth of a dialogue and the rebirth of the victims.
>> To see: the trailer of the film
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A fiction to account for the intensity
In “I will always see your faces”, as she did in “Pupille”, her first feature film released in 2018, the French filmmaker sheds light on a little-known place in reality that offers tools that bring hope. To achieve this, she did a lot of research and was helped in particular by a restorative justice facilitator.
I like to work on the intensity, the tension. This playground offered to me by restorative justice was a great promise.
If the film looks like a documentary, it is indeed a fiction. “I’m not a documentary filmmaker. I love documentaries, but that’s not at all what I know how to do and what I want to do. In documentaries, the two things that fascinate me the most are missing in my work: a scenario and actors”, admits Jeanne Herry interviewed by the RTS.
>> To see: the cultural meeting of “12:45” with Jeanne Herry
Dialogue as the main character
The dialogues, the faces and the voices are the raw material of “I will always see your faces”. “The dialogue is the main action of the characters in the film. It’s not chatter at all, it’s really dialogue, it’s expensive, it’s regarding telling each other, finding the right words. It is a verb which is action and sometimes emotion”, underlines the director.
For her film, Jeanne Herry took advantage of the experience and encounters of those who do restorative justice, but also of victims. She also followed some training before writing, but might not attend sessions. By discovering restorative justice, Jeanne Herry knew that she had found a “treasure” to make a fiction: “Restorative justice is to repair people, it is not concerned with the objectivity of facts, but with people’s subjectivity: what did they see, what did they feel, what did they experience…”.
>> Also watch the 7:30 p.m. Monday topic:
In the cast of this choral film, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Leïla Bekhti, Elodie Bouchez, Gilles Lellouche, Denis Podalydès, Miou-Miou or even Fred Testot. Famous actors, but also lesser known actors in the service of a moving film which speaks of people, of the power of bonds, of violence, but also of understanding and listening to others.
Interview by Pierre Philippe Cadert
Web adaptation: Lara Donnet
“I will always see your faces”, by Jeanne Herry, with Adèle Exarchopoulos, Leïla Bekhti, Elodie Bouchez, Gilles Lellouche, Denis Podalydès and Miou-Miou. On view now in French-speaking cinemas.
