a documentary to understand female infanticide

ART – WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 AT 10:55 PM – DOCUMENTARY

According to a white note from the Ministry of the Interior from July 2022, a woman kills her child in France every ten days. This statistic caught the attention of director Sofia Fischer, who began by consulting the audition minutes: “I had no choice” was the phrase she repeated the most. Then he wrote to the women who committed infanticide in prison, to their families, to their lawyers, to ask for their testimonies, with the commitment: “If you trust me with your word, I promise to keep it. » He made a film, his first, that highlights the commonalities of these tragic journeys. “To help those for whom it is not yet too late”she said.

Three testimonies are presented, starting with that of Blanche and Alexia, mother and sister respectively of Hélène, who killed her 4-year-old son before committing suicide. Hélène was depressed, but she did not show it, say the two women, filmed at their home. This is a first point common to all three stories. Violence, the presence of a man, the feeling of male impunity and loneliness will follow.

The director took the necessary time to release the word: Blanche and Alexia thus return in detail to the day of the tragedy and the brutal announcement by the police. “Your daughter killed her son.”…The mother feels offended. He will talk less later, when Alexia talks about the father’s touches.

System failures

For Jean-Guillaume Le Mintier, lawyer at the Rennes Bar Association, “It is more reassuring for society to label these women as monsters than to try to understand them.” Dr. Mathieu Lacambre, psychiatrist, head of service at the Montpellier University Hospital, will allow everyone to see things more clearly: “Being a mother you cannot free yourself from it, and the more mandates there are, the more the mother feels cornered, imprisoned, to the point of only thinking about a final solution. »

During the narration, the actress Laure Calamy reads extracts from Cécile’s letter, ten pages sent from prison to the director: “Dear Sofia, (…) You don’t wake up one morning and tell yourself you’re going to kill your son…” The strong intonation weighs down the story, which otherwise moves with sincerity and reveals the failings of the police and the legal system.

Third to testify, Christelle is filmed from behind. Despite the ordeal that this visibly represents for her, she will tell how, at the age of 18, her mother “strong and available” of two daughters, changed when he saw the eldest grow up. With, as a culmination, an uninterrupted sequence of more than six minutes, which begins with: “My father knocked on the door. I opened like you open to your dad. I thought he was going to apologize. »

Implicitly, these dramas highlight the burden that weighs on every mother. Is society asking too much of you? “Great debate”said m.^my Frédérique Baulieu, lawyer at the Paris Bar Association. Under pressure, the most fragile ones break.

“Moms regularly tell me: sometimes I want to throw it out the window. It is normal and it is good to verbalize it.Dr. Lacambre calmly states. Instead, don’t say anything, be ashamed and look out the window to see how high you are from the ground…”