CASE 137 © Fanny de Gouville
Dossier 137 (Case 137): Dominik Moll Delves into the Secrets of Police Institutionalism
Two years after the success of La Nuit du 12 (The Night of the 12th), which received six Césars, Dominik Moll returns to the Official Selection with a new thriller that immerses viewers in the secrets of police institutionalism. Screened in Competition, Dossier 137 (Case 137) follows a female Internal Affairs inspector who is in charge of investigating a violent case involving her colleagues.
Since Harry, un Ami qui vous veut du bien (Harry, He’s Here to Help), the film that put him on the map in 2000, Dominik Moll continues to place his characters in situations that expose their inner conflicts and push them to explore the limits of their morality. As such Yohan, the investigator played by Bastien Bouillon in La Nuit du 12 (The Night of the 12th) (2022), presented in Cannes Première, becomes haunted by an unsolved murder and watches as his obsession leads him to question everything around him including his own perception of justice and masculinity.
This theme of uncertainty in the French-German filmmaker’s work resurfaces in Dossier 137 (Case 137), a new feature film co-written with his long-standing collaborator, Gilles Marchand, which highlights the protagonist’s internal struggles as she watches her institution lose its moral compass.
Stéphanie, played by Léa Drucker, is a female investigator for Internal Affairs (IA), the police’s own watchdog, tasked to investigate a case of police brutality. As she moves through her investigation to examine the circumstances surrounding a riot gun’s blast ball, which seriously injured a young man during a Yellow vest protest, the officer faces hierarchical pressure that shakes her own beliefs to the core.
Shot between October and December 2024 in Paris and in the French Great East region, Dossier 137 (Case 137) tackles the subject of police brutality, which has been a much talked about issue for several years. With this feature film, Dominik Moll delivers a sharp view on the failings of an oft-maligned institution.
