By using a fictional device to convey the words of a rape victim, “Sans Knock” renews the societal documentary. Meeting with the director, Alexe Poukine.
AlloCiné: Without knocking stands out from the documentary stricto sensu by its device. How was this atypical project born?
Alexe Poukine: I wanted to make a film around the story of Ada who was raped three times by a man she knew. I met her before the MeToo movement became world famous and I think that Ada like me knew that a direct testimony in front of the camera would be a bad idea. The public being at that time very little aware of the question of rape, I feared that it would be hostile towards Ada, that it would consider her behavior more problematic than that of her attacker. I could clearly see that people who have not experienced rape often tend not to want to identify with the victims, because we were brought up in a society that constantly blames the victims, but also perhaps because that we live with the idea (completely false in my opinion) that everyone deserves what happens to them. There was also from the beginning the idea that it is fundamental to be able to identify with people who have lived a similar story. We wanted to create a chorus around these singular stories which are nevertheless each the expression of the same story, that of male domination. It was therefore necessary to find a device that both brings a distance that would make this story understandable and that also allows the spectators to question their own representations of rape.
The film is exciting when it slips and the actors lower their masks and are overtaken by their emotions.
The bet of the film was that Ada’s story would resonate with those of other people who were very different in terms of gender, age, social background, etc. And it was very nice, during filming, to see that all these people could identify in one way or another with this woman they only knew through a written account.
Had you considered a documentary without device?
I don’t think that a documentary without device can exist. The simple fact of placing a camera in front of a person is for me a device. It’s just that this device is considered “normal” because it is very banal. In any case, I thought long and hard about what would be the fairest in terms of staging for this film. When I was young, I wanted to be an actress and I was fascinated by how the false can reveal something true. I feel like there’s something performative about acting: playing a role forces you to try to understand the person you’re playing. It changes your representations and therefore the way you see the world. This is also what pushed me to choose this fictional device for my documentary.
Have the actors been put in contact with their model?
We filmed 28 people (in the end half are in the film). For Ada, it would have been quite restrictive to be put in contact with each and every one of the performers. Each person embodied this text with their own sensitivity, their own reading grids, which, for me, makes this story more universal. If, during editing, we decided to make it almost indeterminable what belongs to Ada’s story and what belongs to the 14 people who interpret it, it is because, in my opinion, all these stories belong to a one and the same story. Knowing who lived what does not seem relevant to me. What matters, I believe, is that these destructive stories do happen and are unfortunately extremely commonplace.
Have some actors refused to endorse certain testimonies?
No. We started filming right in the Weinstein case and there was at that time for many victims and witnesses a real urgency to speak. I knew more or less closely the story of each of the protagonists of the film and I tried to give them to interpret chapters of Ada’s text that would resonate with their own experience. It is, for example, policewomen who interpret the parts where the complaint is concerned. To interpret the chapters which directly describe the rapes, I have chosen professional actresses who have not had a comparable experience. If the idea was to allow the people in the film to tell their own story based on that of Ada, it was not a question of making them suffer or traumatize them. During the whole process of the film, I had the feeling of walking on eggshells. I knew that the stories entrusted to me were eminently painful for many of the protagonists of the film. This one is also extremely soft and tender compared to what we had in the rushes.
The Without Knocking trailer: