fiction / 1976 / France / col. / 124 min.
Based on documents compiled by leading French philosopher Michel Foucault, I, Pierre Rivière, a unique and original film, charts the gruesome events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and brother before fleeing to the countryside. With a cast made up of real-life villagers from the area where the events took place, the detailed re-enactments and careful attention to the gestures of their ancestors serve to create an intense and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of hyper-realism. Radical, bold and uncompromising, director René Allioʼs extraordinary work is at one and the same time an ethnographic enquiry, an historical reconstruction, and an unflinching portrait of psychopathology and its aftermath.
Director: René Allio
Screenplay: Michel Foucault, Pascal Bonitzer, Jean Jourdheuil, Serge Toubiana
Photography: Bob Alazraki, Nurith Aviv, Michel Thiriet
Editor: Sylvie Blanc
Cast: Claude Hébert, Jacqueline Milière, Joseph Leportier, Annick Géhan, Nicole Géhan, Emilie Lihou, Antoine Bourseiller, Michel Amphoux, Jacques Debary