Through the Night

One night, the police emergency call center receives a call from a woman. The young teacher Aly (Selma Alaoui) feels threatened by the driver of the car she is sitting in. The employee Anna (Veerle Baetens) takes the call and tries to pretend with Aly that she is just chatting with her sister about her child's sleepover. The man named Dary (Guillaume Duhesme), a fugitive acquaintance of Aly, is arrested. Weeks pass and the justice system searches for evidence. Aly, Anna and Dary are confronted with the aftermath of a night they cannot put behind them. Based on her acclaimed short film “Une sœur” (2018), director Delphine Girard has expanded this exciting story. “Through the Night” tells the story of what happens to the three people involved after the drastic night. It's not just the initial emergency situation that grabs you, but also the characters' backgrounds: Dary, who works as a firefighter and is supported by his domineering mother (Anne Dorval), tries to reconcile his behavior that night with his own self-image. “It's easy to understand why Girard's short film received such a positive response. Because the opening in the car and at Anna's workplace creates an enormous amount of tension. The ways that Aly and Anna find to exchange all the necessary information is extremely impressive. [...] In its atmosphere, skillfully captured by cinematographer Juliette Van Dormael, the film is reminiscent of Mikhaël Hers' “Passengers of the Night” (2022), which was able to capture the melancholy of urban space in a similarly harmonious way. André Téchiné's crime drama “Thieves of the Night” (1996) also comes to mind. Ben Sheime's music contributes to the mesmerizing effect of the production, as does the frequent use of close-ups that do not allow any distance from what is being shown. The work makes it clear how sobering and downright unbearable it is for a person who has been the victim of a violent crime to not even be believed afterwards. [...] Girard and Van Dormael ultimately find a strong final image for a film that on the one hand demonstrates the shortcomings of a legal system and on the other recognizes hope in solidarity.” (Andreas Köhnemann, on: kino-zeit.de)