La Fille dans les bois (2021)

Jeanne, 27, who works in Hong Kong, returns just in time to be at her sister Céline’s bedside. Céline dies in her arms, telling her that Youssef has been wrongfully imprisoned for 15 years for the murder of Julie, Jeanne’s childhood friend. At the time, Céline had not dared to admit that she was with Youssef when the crime took place, which would have given him an alibi. Céline makes Jeanne promise to do everything she can to clear Youssef of the crime. Jeanne sets out to reopen a case that everyone had thought was closed, with an “ideal” culprit already identified. After their parents died in an accident when the sisters were children, they were taken in and raised by their uncle Éric, who had himself lost his wife and child in the same accident. Éric, a gruff, brutal former forest ranger nostalgic for French Algeria, becomes a suspect for a time: hadn’t he thrown little Julie out that evening, the night she was murdered? Hadn’t he left the house that night and lied about it during the investigation? Then there is Gilles, who was also around 15 years ago, served a sentence for child molestation, and lives in a yurt in a hamlet inhabited by outsiders. And there is Joseph, who was the friendly school-bus driver at the time. Today he keeps bees, but he is also hiding a dark past: he kidnapped a young woman who had run away and held her captive until that night, 15 years ago. The journalist’s articles bring to light testimonies that had been impossible to obtain back then. As information comes in and details are cross-checked, Jeanne and Thomas move closer to the truth and unmask the person who murdered Julie 15 years earlier. Reconciled with her uncle Éric, and having helped him put this painful past behind him, Jeanne will be able to leave again.