Roubaix, Police Department, Ordinary Business
Crime & Punishment
•
1h 26m
Directed by Mosco Boucault • Documentary • 2007 • 87 minutes
A teenage runaway. A stabbing spree during a Christmas dinner that leaves multiple casualties. A series of sexual assaults in a subway station. This is the “ordinary business” that police in the working class northern French town of Roubaix deal with over the course of several months. We follow their investigations into these crimes — even as they are hampered by false accusations, the complexities of family relationships, and sometimes the ineptitude of the police themselves.
But when an elderly woman is murdered in her bed, detectives from Roubaix’s central police station quickly realize they’re dealing with eye-witnesses whose story is designed to cover up more than it reveals. (The murder case was the inspiration for the 2019 dramatic feature Roubaix, une lumière (Oh Mercy!), which premiered at Cannes.) As their story falls apart, a darker truth is revealed.
Part of director Mosco Boucault’s “Police Investigations” series, ROUBAIX, POLICE DEPARTMENT, ORDINARY BUSINESS, is raw and compelling — watching it we can easily forget this is documentary and not fiction.
Up Next in Crime & Punishment
-
South
Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 1999 • 70 minutes
Inspired by her love of William Faulkner and James Baldwin, renowned director Chantal Akerman had planned to produce a meditation on the American South. However, just days before she was to begin filming, James Byrd, Jr. was murdered ...
-
Tribal Justice
Directed by Anne Makepeace • Documentary • 2017 • 87 minutes
TRIBAL JUSTICE is a feature documentary about a little known, underreported but effective criminal justice reform movement in America today: the efforts of tribal courts to create alternative justice systems based on their traditions. ...
-
Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
Directed by Arne Birkenstock • Documentary • With Wolfgang Beltracchi, Henrik Hanstein, Sofia Komarova • 2015 • 93 minutes
For nearly 40 years, Wolfgang Beltracchi fooled the international art world and was responsible for the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era. An expert in art hist...
