“Thanks to God” from François Ozon is a film that should have been a documentary but in the end, had faces of fiction to tell better a reality still unresolved: the case real abuse of children by a Catholic priest from Lyon (France).
As explained by French filmmaker in an interview, “very clear” had it from the beginning.
“I wanted to speak from the point of view of victims; “with the Church I just show a few facts which, on the other hand, were well known in France, ‘thank God’ who said (Cardinal Philippe) Barbarin at the press conference in which revokes the crimes because they had prescribed occupied many holders” clarifies Ozon.
But the victims “were not” in the heart of France, said the Director in a speech in Madrid, where he has traveled with one of the protagonists of the film, Denis Ménochet, known for his role in the brutal “Jusqu’ à la garde”.
Father Bernard Preynat in “Grace à Dieu” is counted one of the most relevant cases of paedophilia in the French Church, accusations of more than seventy children who denounced abuses in the years 80 and 90 when they were boy scouts in charge of Father Bernard Preynat that he acknowledged abuses but still has no date to testify before the judge.
Yes did the month passed, between another dozen people complaints, Barbarin, Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon, who was sentenced to six months will not take you to jail but if managed his resignation, which, “by the way – details Ozon – the Pope has rejected”.
“I do not establish hierarchy in suffering, but I think that these men abused in their childhood are a time bomb, because when they suffer the problem, they don’t understand it, they can not verbalize what happens, not even his parents realize what happens” He explained.
And “that suffering stays in your subconscious, in third or fourth level, and they grow back to surface, especially when they have children of the same age they had when they were abused and then explode.”
Story based on real events is the first time Ozon (“Dans la maison”, “Frantz”) focuses on a story attached not only to the present day, but completely based on real events, and is also the first in which opts to contain its ironic and ironic style for sho AR aseptically the deplorable facts which denounces and which, however, never shows.
Explains that this has happened because knowing the real protagonists did that it contained: “There is much less distance than with the characters in my other films with them”.
The film is structured as a relay race that begins with a runner’s background, Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud), a practicing Catholic, father of five children that one day, when he already has 40 years, sees the priest who abused him in his childhood in an image online qu (e) it shows him surrounded by children.
Their struggle, their complaint – first, before the Church itself – and his decision cause a snowball that collects a policeman; This locates François (Denis Ménochet), an atheist who launches a partnership, “The free word”, where collects testimonies of others like them. Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud), a young patient and maladjusted is well known.
Ménochet commented that, despite his rough appearance and its ‘few friends’ face – accepts laughingly-, fragility is also in it, “all human beings carry it, but this topic almost demanded it”, but says that it was “the eyes of François what directed me toward that” fragility”.
The actor believes that “when it comes to paedophilia, not is it empathizes with victims” and is confident that this film will help to do this. “Seems to me magnificent as film and necessary for society through the door that has opened even within the Church”.
