3 powerful films to grasp the invisible

1. Stups, Alice Odiot and Jean-Robert Viallet

Doc., 1h 26. In theaters.

The judge’s gaze is attentive and piercing. The camera sneaks behind the defendant’s back, whose breath we almost hear, and captures this face-to-face. All the strength of this documentary is there, in this ability to show the invisible, that is to say the work of justice in the affairs of narcotics.

Stupies is the fruit of a long-term project, launched in 2021 by directors Alice Odiot and Jean-Robert Viallet, who have both already been rewarded by the prestigious Albert-London Prize. Frozes (never hitherto filmed) to the hearing rooms of the Marseille court (Bouches-du-Rhône), a whole world made up of magistrates, lawyers and defendants is revealed to the spectator.

“It is in the jails that we understand Marseille better: the accused (e) engages on his childhood, his career and his accommodation. These people have often grown apart from schooling, they went to prison, we quickly see the spiral in which they are taken, ”explains Alice Odiot.

The brutal reality is obvious: if the first victims of the drug remain of course consumers and their families, the “small hands exploited by the networks which are hypercapitalist companies” are also according to Jean-Robert Viallet.

During hearings, judges and prosecutors face human realities imbued with violence and suffering. Their sense of listening and their courage are admirable.

From Flagrant crimes (1994) and 10th bedroom (2004), from Raymond Depardon, rare are the documentaryists who have been able to tell with such finesse these seizure of truths of truth.

Our opinion: PPP