Dir/Wri: Christine Angot | Doc, France 2024 82’
An alarming expose of family disfunction is at the heart of this unsettling ‘cri de coeur’ from award-winning French writer Christine Angot who bases her documentary debut, set in Strasbourg, on her 1999 novel L’Inceste.
Angot, 59, strikes a gamine figure in her stylish black jeans and white boots but her delicate features hide a lifetime of trauma. We meet her in leafy suburb of Strasbourg where her father, who died a few years ago, first started abusing her when she was only 13. His wife and children still live there. Angot knocks on the door and barges her way into their stylish family home confronting her father’s wife and insisting her cameraman joins for moral support in what turns out to be a challenging confrontation that will expose the raw feelings Christine still harbours as she demands to know what this middle class woman thinks about her deceased husband’s covert history of long term sexual abuse. Now a mother of teenager herself, Christine is clearly emotionally damaged and still haunted by what her father did back then and its legacy that marks her own family. A brave and fascinating reportage.
The French novelist, playwright and journalist was born Chateauroux. Her first novel “Vu du Ciel” was published in 1990. She rose to prominence in 1999 with “L’Inceste”. This was followed by titles including “Les Désaxés” and “Une part du Cœur”, both of which were awarded the Prix France Culture. Her most recently published work “Le Voyage dans l’Est” won the 2021 Medici Prize. She was made an Officer of Arts and Letters in 2013 and has been a member of the Goncourt Academy since 2023.
NOW ON RELEASE IN FRANCE | BERLINALE PREMIERE and winner of Tagesspiegel Readers’ Jury Award 2024.