Caught in the Acts

The documentary takes place in the prosecutors’ offices of the Paris courthouse. Fourteen people arrested on charges of theft, fraud or assault are brought before deputy prosecutors in fixed shots, and after that come their meetings with duty solicitors. Raymond Depardon adds neither commentary nor music, leaving only the questioning itself and leaving the gap between the smallness of the offence and the weight of the machinery for the viewer to measure. The film takes its title from the summary procedure under which a person arrested is brought straight before a prosecutor, and it was shot in the offices of the eighth section of the courthouse. The hundred and nine minute French production won the César for best documentary in 1995. The deputy prosecutor Michèle Bernard-Requin appears in the film.