Une famille – Films – Visions du Réel

A Family

Christine Angot
France | 2024 | 81 min
Swiss Premiere
Language : French
Subtitle : English

Armed with astonishing courage, a camera and some dear friends, author Christine Angot travels to Strasbourg, the city where she met her father at the age of 13 and where he raped her for the first time. Interviewing family and friends, she reopens wounds, kicks down closed doors, and examines the mechanisms of the incest taboo. A powerful, urgent and important film.

Christine Angot never leaves the screen, occupying every second of her first film. Cinematographer Caroline Champetier captures her up close, documenting every inch of her fear and courage. The urgency is palpable and violence is intrinsic to this investigation. Because in 2024, it is still necessary to force open doors, impose one’s presence and raise one’s voice to be heard as a victim, even years and, in this case, several award-winning books after the fact. There are certainly mind-boggling television archives that bear witness to the progress made against misogyny and the trivialisation of incest, but what about in the inner circle? As the title suggests, it is the family unit that the director has decided to dissect. Where were they, this mother-in-law, this mother, this former partner, when the child, the teenager and then the young woman was being raped? And how does one speak about this with one’s own daughter? Much more than a film, Une famille is a powerful political statement, a gesture of both activism and healing.

Anne Delseth

Une famille, 2024