sf indiefest

Roxie Cinema 2/10/2007 4:30PM

2/18/2007 12PM

California Theater-Berkeley 2/14/2007 9:30PM

Oliver Meyrou’s Beyond Hatred is a calm and moving cinema-verite documentary about moving past anger and revenge. François Chenu, a young gay man, was beaten by three skinheads and thrown in a pond to die in Rheims, France.

Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, the film bears witness to the strength and dignity of Chenu’s parents and siblings as they travel from despair to hope. Told without narration, the story portrays the families, the victim, and the accused, and details the French legal system in its examination of the aftermath of this terrible attack. Austerely composed and flawlessly directed, the film is powerful without being preachy. Beyond Hatred is shot in the classic Verite style where the crew is invisible and the characters in this real-life tragedy speak on their own, and in their own way. In one bravura sequence, Chenu’s sister recounts her memory of the evening her brother was killed as the camera calmly surveys the park two years after the attack, accompanied by an evocative and sparse score by François Eudes Chanfrault.