“Showing the despair of families is a way of moving the lines”

The actor is at the origin and plays in this fiction which tells the story of a murderous mother to end the suffering of her autistic child. An illustration of the loneliness and distress of parents faced with this handicap.

Published on 04/03/2024 12:38 Updated on 04/03/2024 12:39

Reading time: 7 min Samuel Le Bihan on April 3, 2024. (FRANCEINFO / RADIOFRANCE)

Star of the series Alex Hugo on France 3, actor Samuel Le Bihan plays in the TV film: You will not kill broadcast on France 2, Wednesday April 3 at 9:10 p.m., a lawyer, Maître Marchand, asked to defend a woman, Elsa, indicted for infanticide. Accused of having ended the life of her daughter suffering from severe autism, she takes responsibility for this action. A film which will be followed by a debate moderated by Julian Bugier, in which Samuel Le Bihan, father of a 12-year-old autistic girl, will participate as part of the program “The evening continues: Autism, the distress of families”.

“We must always remember that we need to understand what this disorder is. Qhen you see someone in the street who has strange attitudes, who talks to themselves, it is perhaps someone who is a prisoner of their brain, who does not have the means to communicate“, underlines Samuel Le Bihan. And there is not only autism, there is also depression, schizophrenia, bipolarity, these are, he says, “all these invisible handicaps which lock people in and which are part of our society and which we must learn to discover. We must talk regarding them to learn to accept them, not to be afraid of them and understand what they are too“.

“‘Thou shalt not kill’ tells of absolute despair”

According to him, Thou shalt not kill “says absolute despair, the worst one can imagine”. He also puts his finger on a sad reality that many families face, that of isolation: “At one point, we quickly find ourselves apart, on the sidelines because your child is screaming. We stop being invited to friends’ houses. You sacrifice yourself and by sacrificing yourself, you isolate yourself, you stop your work. It’s a kind of despair that sets in and demotivation while being in absolute sacrifice. It’s 90% of mothers“. So, it’s not a film that provides substantive answers according to him, but it has the merit of approaching the subject, of talking regarding it, of expressing it, “It gives us time to think, time to say, what would I have done? How might I experience these things? And therefore also develop a little empathy“.

The Legion of Honor for his commitment

The actor set up in 2019 with Florent Chapel, the platform Autism Info Service to listen to and advise autistic people and those around them. A place to listen, but which also gives precise information on the law, on medicine, on how to file an MDPH file, and find a dentist. “It responded to all the despair that I have felt and seen in my life as a man. And making it in a film, but on an extreme case, so as to sweep the spectrum as widely as possible, it was a way of trying to move the lines”, explains Samuel Le Bihan. Support that was able to help 40,000 families. “We have 30,000 visits per month”specifies Samuel Le Bihan who adds that “it has become a public service which is extremely well adapted to the needs of parents“.

Samuel Le Bihan received the Legion of Honor on Tuesday April 2 for his commitment to the parents of autistic children, an immense source of pride for the actor, who has the feeling of“to have been able to bring something concrete, to have been able to make things happen, to make them evolve in the right direction”.