Shock Waves – Diary of My Mind

Friday 12 October, Cinema 1, 6:15pm

 

French teacher Madame Fontanel (an astonishing Fanny Ardant) tasks her class with writing a personal journal, laying bare their innermost thoughts and feelings. One of her pupils, the despondent Benjamin (an equally impressive Kacey Mottet-Klein) uses the exercise to rigorously document his decision to commit double parricide. After the crime has been executed, he delivers his sprawling confessional directly to Madame Fontanel, implicating her in ways she could never have imagined. Produced as part of a Swiss TV series dramatising real-life crimes, Meier’s film is an austere, fiercely intelligent piece of work, as suited to the big screen as it is the small. Can art breed violence? And what is the responsibility of the educator when influencing impressionable young minds? This brooding think piece poses many thorny questions, refusing to trivialise them with easy answers.