17/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Charlotte Devillers and Arnaud Dufeys follow in the footsteps of a mother who struggles with the slow march of justice while trying to protect her son who’s a victim of incest

Ulysse Goffin, Myriem Akheddiou and Adèle Pinckaers in We Believe You

We Believe You [+see also:
trailer
interview: Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte…
film profile] by Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte Devillers has been unveiled in a world premiere within the 75th Berlinale’s brand-new Perspectives section, which is dedicated to first fiction feature films. This screening marks Belgian filmmaker Dufeys’ return to Berlin, having previously presented his short film Un invincible été in the Generation section last year. For Charlotte Devillers, meanwhile, who’s a nurse by trade, this is her first film foray, but her considerable experience working with young people and families wrestling with the torment of incest and sexual abuse has fed into the fictional approach adopted by the duo.

We Believe You opens with the arrival of Alice (Myriem Akheddiou) and her children (Ulysse Goffin and Adèle Pinckaers) in court. We sense they’re at breaking point, hanging by a thread. They have a meeting with the family court judge. We soon understand the situation: the mother’s incomprehension faced with the seeming deafness of the legal system and the despondency of the two children who are trapped in an endless spiral of having to repeat the same thing over and over again, all three of them summoned on the request of the father (Laurent Capelluto) who is calling the mother’s behaviour into question and challenging her custody rights. The time they spend waiting ahead of their hearing illustrates the full systemic brutality of this institution, which forces them to share the same room as a father who is very soon afterwards designated a rapist, and sees them endeavouring through words and consistent testimonies to lend evidential value to the son’s voice and subsequent suffering. That is, until the moment time stands still when they’re called into the hearing in the judge’s chambers. One by one, the lawyers of the children, father and mother, and then the father himself, take to the floor before, finally, Alice, the mother, is allowed to speak; an allowance which is made possible, in a full frame shot, by fiction, as if in some kind of reparation; a protected space in which they’re finally forced to hear her out.

Because it’s the quality of listening which the film calls into question, on all kinds of levels. Firstly, by frequently showing characters listening - Alice in particular - and by leaving action and discourse to play out off camera. Secondly, by imposing Alice’s words, giving them the full attention afforded by the big screen and accommodating the real-time pace of a testimony in court. Lastly, by sparing the children the task of re-performing - in the name of fiction - their account, which has already been set out a number of times and where every single reiteration sees them reliving the abuse they’ve already suffered.

With commendable economy of means (the film was supported by the Wallonia-Brussels Film and Audiovisual Centre as a lightweight production project), We Believe You focuses on the essential, opening up a space for accounts which are uncomfortable yet crucial to understanding the problematics surrounding situations of incest and sexual abuse. Buoyed by on-point acting (Myriem Akheddiou’s performance is as subtle as it is powerful, juxtaposed with the oratory skill of the lawyers, who are played by real professionals) and a true-to-life approach to capturing the setting - a court made of glass which manhandles families and reflects the brutality of the wider system - the film lends words their full meaning and makes full use of fiction’s powers of embodiment and identification to offer audiences a transformative experience.

We Believe You was produced by Makintosh Films (Belgium). World sales are managed by The Party Film Sales.

(Translated from French)