Our Children

Director's Statement

On learning about the “Lhermitte Affair”, Thomas Bidegain, Matthieu Reynaert and myself recognised the narrative seeds of a story that would allow us to write a screenplay with a powerful plot and complex, fascinating dramatic stakes. How does an “ordinary” mother come to kill her five children? In our eyes, this climax is the symptom of dramatic issues rich in fascinating questions. A PERDRE LA RAISON is not simply the story of a modern Medea. The context of the “Lhermitte Affair” allows us to tackle the causes of the imbalance in the family cell, the challenges brought about by the social and cultural mix of a Belgian-Algerian couple, the consequences of the paralysing power of money and the perverse effect of the mighty power of neo-colonialism concealed beneath a mask of altruism. Wishing to find a cinematic form that does not veer towards the sensational, one obvious thing quickly imposed itself and strongly influenced our writing. We felt that it was primordial to avoid showing the crime and the slaughter. This is why we have decided to write a film that leaves a lot of space to events that occur off screen and so to the audience’s subjectivity and imagination. This tragic story allows us to observe, in a particularly acute manner, the minor weaknesses of people and their huge consequences. After two and a half years of writing, we are more determined than ever to offer audiences an accessible and open film that will both inspire reflection and arouse intense emotion.