Programmer's Note

In 2001, Alain Marécaux and his wife Edith were arrested on accusations of pedophilia — horrific acts they never committed. These wrongful indictments, along with several others, sparked one of the most disturbing scandals in modern French legal history, and came to be known as the Outreau case. Vincent Garenq’s disturbing drama inves­tigates the corrupt judicial system under which Alain spent years fighting to get out of prison, clear his name and keep his family.

When we first meet Alain he is being questioned by the young Judge Burgaud and is already a broken man. He once lived a routine life — long work hours balanced by his love for his wife and three children. But any semblance of normality was torn away when a police squad charged into his home and arrested him and Edith.

Terrified and confused, Alain is thrown into numerous interrogations that seem designed to trap him into corroborating the testimonies given by his accusers: two cou­ples responsible for prostituting their own children, who are complete strangers to Alain. Living a nightmare that spirals out of control as the allegations become wilder, he finds himself sinking further into a legal structure that doesn’t seem to care about the circum­stantial nature of their flimsy evidence.

Philippe Torreton delivers a powerfully emotional performance as Alain, a man who must stand with his hands cuffed and watch his life shatter around him. Guilty immerses us in the world of prison cells, judges’ chambers and hospital rooms that define Alain’s tortured existence, and asks us not just to empathize with a man trapped in an inhuman system, but to recognize the human error behind this miscarriage of jus­tice and demand accountability. One of the most gripping films of the year. Cameron Bailey