WINNER - Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival
An ambitious, urgently topical story from France's side of the Catholic Church abuse scandal from famed French director Franois Ozon.
Alexandre lives in Lyon with his wife and children. One day, quite by chance, he discovers that the priest who abused him when he was a member of a boy scout troop is still working with children. Determined to see justice served, Alexandre re-establishes contact with his boyhood friends, also victims of the same priest and the men vow to lift the burden of silence. However, as the institutional weight and power of the Catholic Church bears down on this defiant group of survivors determined to tell their story, no one is left unscathed. Based on a true, still-developing story, this tender and strong drama, told through the victims perspective, tells a harrowing tale of innocence lost, the abuse of trust and often futile search for revenge.
"A thoughtful, fast-paced, and immaculately acted procedural that unfolds with the urgency of a newspaper deadline, By the Grace of God zips through the facts of this horrid case, while also shaping them into a lens through which to examine the uneasy relationships between mercy and justice, between faith and the flawed institution that exists to preserve it."- Indiewire