From a simple summons for drunk driving to night-time arraignments, the 10th chamber immerses us in the daily life of a courtroom: twelve cases, twelve stories of men and women who, one day, found themselves facing justice. 

A man in his shirtsleeves stands with both arms held rigidly toward the ceiling. An undocumented repeat pickpocket, he is on hunger strike after being charged with stealing from tourists on the Métro and resisting arrest. His sentence is one year in prison, a ten-year ban from French territory, and a €500 fine. He cries out that this is a clear miscarriage of justice. It is one of the most searing scenes in 10th District Court: Moments of Trial, which continues Raymond Depardon’s engagement with the judicial system. Ten years after Caught in the Acts (1994), he brings his camera into an actual courtroom.
Filmed entirely inside the Tenth Chamber of the Paris Criminal Court, the film derives much of its force from its mise-en-scène. A simple shooting principle inspired by the courtroom’s physical layout becomes a firm aesthetic and political choice. Depardon visually intensifies the hierarchy between an austere, authoritarian judicial institution and the vulnerable individuals standing before it. Exposing both the dysfunctions of the trial process and its inherent theatricality, the film lays bare defendants stripped of every defense before the immense machinery of justice.

• ProducerClaudine NOUGARET
• Edit Simon JACQUET
• Sound Claudine NOUGARET

Les Films du Losange | Hussein AKBARALY | h.akbaraly@filmsdulosange.fr