In Christine Angot‘s documentary “A Household,” which premieres Sunday within the Encounters part of the Berlin Movie Pageant, the French novelist explores how numerous members of her household reacted to the revelation that she was repeatedly raped by her father from the age of 13.

The movie begins with a startling confrontation between Angot and her stepmother in Strasbourg, with Angot pushing her approach into her stepmother’s residence with a camera-person and continuing to query the girl about Angot’s late father’s crimes and the spouse’s view on that.

Angot says that this incident was not deliberate in any respect. The truth is, the documentary itself was not deliberate. It began when Angot went to Strasbourg as a part of a e-book signing tour to assist the publication of “Le Voyage dans l’Est,” which focuses on these in her inside circle who knew of the abuse and didn’t intervene. She determined to ask her pal Caroline Champetier, a cinematographer, to accompany her, however with out a clear concept of what could be achieved.

Angot had written in regards to the repeated rapes dedicated by her father earlier than. Her novel “Incest” was thought-about to be a chunk of autofiction, and the novel “An Not possible Love” additionally handled an incestuous relationship, and was tailored as a movie by Catherine Corsini.

Nonetheless, having Champetier movie the confrontation together with her stepmother made a “large distinction,” Angot tells Selection. For her to have that digital camera present precisely what was stated meant that Angot didn’t really feel alone, she says, and the digital camera turned a form of witness. Within the movie, the stepmother says the e-book was Angot’s “model” of occasions, however nobody can dispute what we hear of their dialog.

“There’s no different model,” Angot says. “There is usually a judgment. Individuals can say: ‘Oh, she shouldn’t do this. How can she?’ As a result of they attend the scenes. So, they will have an opinion. However they see what they see. They hear what they hear. I don’t have to clarify something. I simply should be there.”

As Angot proceeded to speak to others – together with her mom, her former husband and her daughter – about her expertise of getting been raped by her father, she is “questioning” the standing of a household in society, she says. Her intention was to say to her stepmother: “Let’s simply discuss collectively. In the future we’ll all be lifeless. If there’s something to say – and there may be – it’s now. You’re the mom of my brother and sister. This drawback of incest is just not my drawback, it’s a drawback you’ve too. That your son and daughter even have. It’s not an issue for one particular person, it’s a social drawback.”

There’s additionally an examination of the position of a father within the movie. At one level somebody feedback that Angot was raped by a person, and he or she corrects them to say, “Not a person, my father.” It’s not simply {that a} father needs to be somebody who protects the kid and who needs to be trusted, she says. “If the one who rapes you is your father, it signifies that he doesn’t acknowledge you as his daughter, somebody who ought to profit from the taboo, from the interdiction that incest is forbidden. It’s a safety for kids that it’s forbidden. He doesn’t respect this prohibition. So, it’s a denial of his paternity to you. So, it isn’t solely: ‘Oh I’m being raped.’ It’s that, however not solely. It’s: ‘I’m not acknowledged as a human and social being in a society.’”

She says the rationale her stepmother doesn’t wish to acknowledge what has occurred, and “surrender” her husband is as a result of she would jeopardize her respectability, and her standing in society. “What’s crucial factor is just not reality, what occurred, a criminal offense. A very powerful factor is holding the respectability which they inherited from the sturdy member of the household, which was that man, her husband.”

Regardless that there have been others who didn’t step ahead to guard Angot, she acknowledges that every was held again indirectly. “Everybody has their very own story,” she says.

Angot doesn’t agree together with her stepmother’s view that she had exhibited aggressiveness when in search of to push her approach into the residence. “It’s only a door which has at all times been closed, which started to open and which can be closed once more for dozens of years, till we’re all lifeless,” Angot says.

“What is that this door? It’s the door of the residence – the place the place speaking is feasible for just some minutes. A door behind which the rapes, the incest has been dedicated. How can I let this door be closed once more? It’s too necessary.”