Photograph: Cannes Film Festival

Time Out

16-05-2025

Back in 2022, The Night of the 12th examined an all-male detective team's attempts to solve the murder of a young woman in a small town and exposed sad truths about how women are perceived and treated.
As its title suggests, his new film finds director Dominik Moll delving back into another true life case. This time, the French filmmaker digs into an internal affairs investigation of officers suspected of shooting and badly wounding a young man with rubber bullets at a 2018 Yellow Vest (' gilets jaunes ') demonstration in Paris.
Dogged police officer Stephanie Bertrand (a superb Léa Drucker) methodically leads investigators through each aspect of the case, detailing life-changing head injuries that put teenager Guillaume in hospital, assessing the impact on his mother Joëlle and finding out who fired the weapon via tricky interrogations of suspects. She also interviews Guillaume's friend Remi, present at the incident, who has been rapidly charged, tried and jailed for three months for his part in the demonstrations.
In a crucial moment, Stephanie takes her team to the road off the Champs-Élysées where the shooting happened, identifying a spot where a witness had a clear view of the event. There's a riveting extended sequence where witness Alicia (a hotel maid played by Saint Omer 's Guslagie Malanda) is tracked down at work, briefly interviewed, and then followed by Stephanie. It also opens up another can of worms entirely: would Stephanie's team have been as tenacious if the victim had been a young man of colour instead? Alicia vehemently suggests otherwise.
Would the police have been as tenacious if the victim had been a young man of colour?
Race aside, the knotty moral complexities of Stephanie's work set Moll's film above seen-one-seen-'em-all procedurals. Joëlle confronts Stephanie in a supermarket demanding to know why action takes so long. Public distrust and hatred of police is keenly expressed and brought up by Stephanie's son (who tells friends his narcotics division father is a teacher). The father's new girlfriend, another narcotics officer and union member, snarks that cops should concentrate on criminals rather than other cops.
There's also the thorny nature of who the suspects are: members of the BAC (anti-terror cops who were considered heroes after the Bataclan nightclub terror attack in 2015) who were helping out on the day of the demo. Stephanie is damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.