Faits divers

In the early nineteen-eighties, Raymond Depardon single-handedly follows 60 police officers from the 5th precinct of Paris on their regular night-shifts. By simply tagging along, he originates an approach that would only reach the public realm much later – in the incessant reality TV programmes of our times, which work in similar, although inferior, ways. All manner of people and things file past: vagrants, drunks and ordinary people. Theft, rape and bleeding limbs. Without passing judgement, the film captures a reality that fails to make the newspapers’ headlines, because the stories are too trivial. For example, a police officer who mediates in a rape case, acts conciliatory towards the man and in an authoritarian, condescending tone to the woman. Policemen are fashioned in the image or their own uniforms and the respect they should trigger in the general public. The film was shot in three months in 1982, the year of the world soccer championships, with the dramatic France-Germany match as its climax.