There was total discretion during the three years that filming lasted. And then, on September 5, at 10 a.m., at the M6 auditorium where journalists were invited to discover A silence so loud, Emmanuelle Béart’s face appears on the screen. We then understand that she co-directed, with Anastasia Mikova, this documentary on incest. A few minutes later, we learn that she herself is concerned by the subject, that she was the victim of a man in her family – it is not her father Guy, she insists – from the age of 10 to the age of 14.
At the same time, the magazine She send to media the exclusive interview granted to him by the actress – planned for its September 14 edition – and from which a quote was taken for the title: “Why did I keep silent”. A judicious choice of title: silence and speech are at the heart of the documentary, broadcast this Sunday, at 11:10 p.m., on M6.
At the beginning, Emmanuelle Béart had not considered speaking. In the first minutes ofA silence so loud, she explains that she has had the idea of such a project within her since she was 19 years old. She once thought about adapting a book into fiction. This never came to fruition.
“At first, she did not want to testify, only to co-direct”
His meeting with Anastasia Mikova was decisive. The latter speaks of “human love at first sight”. She says: “We met at the house of one of our mutual friends in 2020. Emmanuelle told me that she had seen my previous film which gave a voice to women from all over the world with on-camera testimonies. She said to herself that, in my approach, something corresponded to what she was looking for. After ten minutes, she confided to me about the incest she had experienced. It was my first evening after the two confinements, I had just given birth, I was not at all prepared to start again on a film straight away, particularly on this subject. And then we saw each other again a few days later and it was obvious: we had to work together. »
“At first, she did not want to testify, only to co-direct. We were going for a choral and collective film,” continues Anastasia Mikova. Three women and a man had to speak in front of the camera: Joachim, raped by both his parents, Norma, raped by his grandfather between the ages of 3 and 12, Pascale, raped by her father at 12, and Sarah, mother of a little girl that her ex-partner raped from the age of 4 to 8. “From the first day of filming with Norma, Emmanuelle understood that it was impossible for her not to also testify,” reveals the director. “Confronted with their courage and their sincerity, I told myself that I had to speak,” the actress actually declares in voice-over at the beginning of the documentary.
“We were in such intimacy, such closeness with these people…” says Anastasia Mikova. “I was approached in a modest way,” confirms Norma, 31, approached by the director at the end of a performance of Norma [le], a one-woman show about what she suffered. “I had previously been contacted by Jean-Marc Morandini, and I had declined the invitation,” she explains. There, I understood that it would not be voyeuristic. They came to pick me up without asking me what color the carpet was but what my body and soul had been through and what I was doing to survive. »
“The interviews lasted a very long time”
“For me, the key was taking the time to create trust,” explains Anastasia Mikova. We’re not in a short time where we arrive, ask five questions, do the nice sequence and move on. The interviews lasted a very long time. We came and came back and stayed in touch throughout this time. » The two directors appear regularly on screen. The discussions take place casually, like confidences between friends.
The objective was to be as educational as possible and to give a relevant, developed response, through each of the testimonies, to the questions that the general public may ask. With Pascale, who became aware of what she had suffered while watching the film Tickles by Andréa Bescond released in 2018, we understand how it is possible to make a blackout for almost forty years on such traumatic facts. With Sarah, we discover with horror the flaws in child protection systems.
Above all, we become aware of what the “noisy silence” of the title means. We learn that a child who is not heard when he denounces what he is experiencing ends up walling himself in silence. But even when victims confide in loved ones, most often, “it doesn’t make an impression”, as Emmanuelle Béart laments on screen. She speaks of the “circles of silence” which imprison those who experience incest: “There is your own silence [en tant que victime]family silence, societal silence…”
“This documentary is absolutely accurate”
“This documentary is one of the most beautiful, important and powerful things I have seen in my life in twenty years of legal combat and public policy on violence against children,” applauds Judge Edouard Durand. He is in absolute accuracy. Everything is fair, both in the emotions, and in the reality of what the people who were victims have experienced and are experiencing. »
The magistrate knows the subject: he is the co-president of the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence (Ciivise) which delivered an analysis on Thursday based on 27,000 testimonies. “Documentary in general, and this one in particular, is never in vain if it is seen by at least one human being [victime d’inceste] who will say to himself: “I can be alive”. I am marked by the omnipresence of the lexical field of death in A silence so loud. There are 5.5 million people [le nombre de Françaises et Français qui sont ou ont été victimes de violences sexuelles dans l’enfance], who will be able to say: “I have reasons to continue living.” »
“Do we want to defend our children? »
“We hope that by listening and seeing these testimonies, some people will have a moment, understand what happened to them or say “I can also talk”, confides Anastasia Mikova. In recent years, more and more people are speaking out. There was Camille Kouchner [autrice de La Familia grande], there was a wave of reactions, it went up and then it went down again. These people have the courage to testify, Emmanuelle speaks about it for the first time, it is not just to say “We are here” but to ask: “Is there anyone listening? we hear from these testimonies? Do we want to defend our children? “The response must be societal and political. »
This is also what Emmanuelle Béart urges in the documentary. She says: “There is a time to survive and a time to act” and also “an injured child can become a combative adult”. For the actress, the fight for the perpetrators of incest to be condemned (at present, 70% of complaints for sexual violence are dismissed and, when there are legal proceedings, only 3% of complaints for rape of a child results in conviction) has become the battle of a lifetime. She won’t be silent anymore.