[Cinéma] “L’Abandon”, a film “au plus près” of the last days of Samuel Paty

CINEMA En hall since Wednesday after its premiere in Cannes, The abandonment makes the clinical account of the ten last days of Samuel Paty, history-geography professor assassinated in 2020 after an online hate campaign.

Clinical account of the cabal that preceded the assassination of Samuel Paty, The abandonment allows the memory to be restored and that “death serves something”, says Mickaëlle Paty, sister of the professor of history and geography who participated in the writing of this film projected in Cannes on Wednesday, the day of its release in theaters. “This film participates in rehabilitation, because its memory was released before the attack, shortly after and again recently with the second trial in appeal” last spring, details Mickaëlle Paty, who met shortly before the out-of-competition screening on the Croisette.

The film retraces the ten days of October 2020 during which this history-geography professor is carried away by a hate campaign fueled by a student’s lie, after a course where caricatures of Mahomet published in Charlie Hebdo. This cabal will lead to his assassination by a radicalized young Chechen on October 16, 2020.

“We have focused on the lie, the conspiracy, the rumor, the campaign on the social networks and on the flaws of a system that has not succeeded in stopping an attack against a professor”, observes Mickaëlle Paty, who has already dedicated a book to his brother. The idea of ​​devoting a fiction to it responds to the need to “recount autrement, différemment” a story whose echo fades little by little. “We understood quite quickly that the homages were going to arrive somewhere at the end of their capacity to federate, to bring together”, estimates the collaborator on the script, signed Vincent Garenq and Alexis Kebbas.

Increasing isolation

Also the director of the film, Vincent Garenq explained that he had to “minimize the fiction part”. The abandonment in order to “be closer to the facts” and to do the work of pedagogy. “We noticed while walking around with the boys who were playing with the students of the class that they observed every year a minute of silence on Samuel Paty, but they knew absolutely nothing about this story,” assures the filmmaker. “When we are traumatized by an event, we tend to look elsewhere”, he estimates, assuring that the cinema allows to remedy it by “incarnating this story and the chain of causalities that led to the tragedy”.

Inertia of academic and police institutions, disloyalty of certain colleagues… The film describes the growing isolation of Samuel Paty as the online campaign grows, accusing him, wrongly, of stigmatizing Muslim students. “The film doesn’t look for scapegoats, but it’s important to understand the flaws so that they don’t reproduce,” he says.

Antoine Reinartz shocking

The film hides nothing and notably takes the part of showing caricatures of Mahomet, at the heart of the online campaign launched against Samuel Paty. “It was indispensable for me, because it was the reason my brother died,” says Mickaëlle Paty. “Il n’est pas mort pour avoir soi-disant criminé des élèves musulmans, il est mort parce qu a été accusé d’avoir commis un acte de blaspheme.”

According to her, as according to the director, national education must now seize the film to “awaken consciences” and inform the young. “Ce film va permettre que sa mort serve à quelque something”, hopes Mickaëlle Paty. For her, the feature film will have a much more personal quality, linked to the interpretation of Antoine Reinartz, who plays Samuel Paty on screen. «Il ya une thing à laquelle je ne mattendais pas, c’est qu’Antoine manage to seize the personnage at this point. He succeeded in resuscitating my brother for 1 hour 40″, she said, adding: “I was very touched, very touched to see him again.”

The abandonment,
by Vincent Garenq. A room.