The film is inspired by Didier Decoin’s book Est-ce ainsi que les femmes meurent? In what way does the novelist’s universe relate to yours?

The subject allowed me to speak about justice, of the friction between individual and society. . . This led me to speak of the difference between justice and vengeance, and to show how society is maybe smarter than the individual alone, even for the sake of the individual. When justice prevails over vengeance, it prevents the victim from becoming an executioner herself. For society not to consider vengeance as a form of justice requires reflection, distance, something extremely profound.

You open your film on a frame of a cargo entering the port. It reminds me a lot of Camus’s La Peste and of the arrival of a metaphysical ailment.

I had thought of Murneau’s Nosferatu because of the boat bringing the plague with the rats. But 38 témoins has really something to do with Sartre and Camus. The film presents two points of view : the individual and the collective. Sartre is more on the moral side while Camus puts the individual before morals. Camus was saying : “Between my mother and justice, I choose my mother”. Sartre chose justice. Personally, I am between the two.

Excerpt from interview conducted by Anne Feuillère http://www.cinergie.be/webzine/lucas_belvaux_38_temoins