Cold-case drama The Night of the 12th has just swept the board at the French Oscars and has the nation talking about misogyny and murder. We talk to its director, Dominik Moll, about how it made him question his own place in the patriarchy
At 6am on a Tuesday in May 2013, the half-charred, petrol-doused body of a young woman was found on a residential street in Lagny-sur-Marne, 25km east of Paris. It was 21-year-old Maud Maréchal, who had been returning at night from a friend’s house to her family home, just a few metres from where she was killed. A neighbour discovered the corpse, the police fruitlessly investigated this horrific murder, and then Maréchal’s death was filed away, hardly noticed by the French press.
Until now. A fictionalised account of the murder, The Night of the 12th by Franco-German director Dominik Moll, has just swept the boards at France’s Oscars equivalent, the César awards, reviving interest in the Maréchal case. But only, thinks Moll, because he made a point of mentioning her during his speech for best film: “It was important to remind people there was a real victim, and her name was Maud,” says the director, speaking over Zoom from his home in Montreuil, 20km from where the young woman lived. “But then quite a few journalists started to talk about the real case, and some of them not in a very responsible way.”
