“I will always see your faces”: restorative justice in an emotional choral film

Introduced into French law in 2014, and revoked in 2020, the notion of “restorative justice” consists of having convicts meet their victims in their place of detention under the mediation of volunteers from civil society. Jeanne Herry devotes her new feature film to it, I will always see your faces, on screens Wednesday, March 29. After Pupil And She adores himthe filmmaker is making a great film, at the crossroads of fiction and documentary, with an exceptional text and actors.

Close-up, widescreen

Nassim, Issa, and Thomas, convicted of violent robberies, Grégoire, Nawelle and Sabine, victims of house arrest, robberies and snatching, but also Chloé, victim of incestuous rape, all engage in Restorative Justice measures.

Many films are currently based on a pronounced taste for dialogue (Saint-Omer, The Banshees of Inisherin, Women Talking…) which would lend themselves as much, if not more, to the theatre. This is not the case of I will always see your faces, where victims and aggressors try to understand each other, filmed on wide screen and close-ups. Sergio Leone had already done it, but Jeanne Herry does not do Leone. She films emotions in a different way, as rarely in the cinema. Plaintiffs and thugs go towards each other, groping, searching for each other, to finally get closer.

Art and citizenship

The director directs her actors like nobody else, and not the least: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Gilles Lellouche, Elodie Bouchez, Miou-Miou, Leïla Bekhti… One after the other, they tell a series of trying and fascinating stories in their dramatic tenor , social, political and emotional. I will always see your faces evokes a dialogical naturalism, where the experience would go through the verb and the interpretation, and therefore, the filming, nerve of the staging.

A real cinematography is at work in the service of the revelation, for many, of the existence of this restorative justice, a concept recently integrated into French law. Its origins, however, date back to ancient times. Traces of it can be found among the first peoples of North America, in the Torah and the Bible. With I will always see your faces, Jeanne Herry confirms herself as a great filmmaker. While acting as a teacher, she combines art and humanism, civility and sensitivity, in the service of the evolution of society. Gorgeous.

The sheet

Gender : Drama
Director: Jane Herry
Actors: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Dali Benssalah, Leïla Bekhti, Gilles Lellouche, Miou-Miou, Elodie Bouchez, Soliane Brahim, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Denis Podalydès, Fred Testo, Birane Ba, Dali Bensalah
Country : France
Duration : 1h58
Exit : March 29 2023
Distributer : StudioCanal