A documentary by Emmanuelle Béart on Sunday on M6, a fiction with Muriel Robin on October 2nd on TF1: two public television programs shed a harsh light on incest, an important social issue at the beginning of the school year.
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Its spread coincides with the launch of the government’s first campaign on the issue in mid-September and the publication on Thursday by the Incest Commission (Ciivise) of an analysis of 27,000 testimonies received over two years.
Co-directed by Emmanuelle Béart and Anastasia Mikova, “Un silence si bois” will air on Sunday at 11:10 p.m. on M6.
This documentary collects the words of four incest victims. Following this, Emmanuelle Béart reveals elements of her own story, revealing that she experienced this trauma between the ages of 10 and 14.
The 60-year-old actress does not reveal the identity of her attacker, but clarified that it was not Guy Béart, her singer father who died in 2015.
The other witnesses are Norma, who was raped as a child by her grandfather Pascale, who hid the abuse of her father Sarah, whose ex-partner abused her granddaughter from the ages of four to eight, until she was fifty, and Joachim, who was his Accuses parents of incest, which they deny.
“Double punishment”
According to Emmanuelle Béart, it is about knowing how “society can and must respond to this speech”.
This answer must be “political and social, I hope that our film will contribute to this,” she said in a video message when the film was presented to the press at the beginning of September.
For Sarah, one of the priorities is to improve the functioning of the justice system. She accuses him of not having sufficiently taken her daughter’s and her words into account and of delaying freeing the child from the clutches of her father and attacker.
“It is a double punishment, we are experiencing mistreatment on the part of the attacker and institutional abuse,” she told AFP, indicating that she had opened a case against the state.
“Today my daughter is 12 years old, she is in the reconstruction phase and I support her with all my love to help her move forward,” she adds with a smile.
Norma, another witness in the documentary, tells how to recover from incest in the comedy show “Norma(le),” which continues on September 27 at the Théâtre du Marais in Paris.
“I had two options: either to sink into the paralysis of what I was experiencing or to sublimate it. I sublimated it through jokes,” she told AFP.
“It has destroyed our lives, there is no denying that, but fortunately we have not only that: we are also people who like to make love, to have relationships with others; We don’t just cry,” she emphasizes.
The “role” of television
Eight days after “Un silence si boisterous”, TF1 will broadcast a fiction with a similar title, “Les Yeux Grands Fertés”, on October 2nd at 9:10 p.m.
It’s more than a film about incest, it’s a film about the denial of incest.
Muriel Robin very convincingly plays a grandmother torn by a dilemma: should she believe her 6-year-old grandson, who is apparently a victim of incest, or her son and father of the little boy (played by the impressive Guillaume Labbé)? , who vehemently denies it?
This film “will certainly cause a discussion within the family. Everyone will be able to question themselves, reflect, and become aware. Television plays an essential role there,” explained the actress, quoted in the TF1 press kit.
“We are at the beginning of an awakening of conscience. Because when there are the numbers about the reality of this situation, the silence remains,” she lamented.
A free speech movement on the topic of incest began after the publication of Camille Kouchner’s book “La Familia grande” in early 2021.
According to the Ciivise (Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children), launched at the same time, 160,000 children in France are victims of sexual violence every year and 5.5 million adults were victims of sexual violence in their childhood, most often within their families.