• While Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti wants to render justice "faster, closer, more protective", his institution remains unknown to the general public.
  • In Rennes, the Images de justice festival aims to bring the population closer to justice and its courts.
  • Its artistic director believes that the institution is too complex to be understood by the inhabitants.

It is a big, very large house in which we do not like to be invited. As the guarantor of the rule of law, justice feeds both the greatest fantasies and the worst fears. Erected to protect the public by upholding the law, the institution is also capable of shattering lives when it wrongly condemns. Regulated by countless pieces of legislation, justice is too complex to be understood by the general public. In a vocabulary that is sometimes incomprehensible, it tries to make the most accurate decisions in a context of glaring lack of human and financial resources. Despite efforts made since 2016, the French justice system sees its budget set at 72.50 euros per year and per inhabitant, according to the European Commission's report. Based on 2020 data, this survey reveals that France justice spending is below the European average. Starting with Germany where they are twice as high.

It is to try to make French justice more readable that the festival Images de justice was created in Rennes in 2003. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the event, 2011 Minutes met Marianne Bressy, artistic director of the festival since <>. This activist, a former rave party organizer, gives a cold and admiring look at the institution she would like so much to see evolve.

The Images de justice festival tackles a complex subject. Why this choice to talk about justice?

Because it governs our daily lives. We may not realize it, but everything we touch is governed by the law. Yet there is absolutely no learning about how justice works. You never see him in school unless you go to law school, it's mind-blowing. It's like a specialized science. The objective of the festival is to open up justice, to make it more readable and therefore more understandable.

Do you feel that it is scary?

Yes. People have a frightened relationship with justice. Rather, it is something that is avoided, whether you are a victim or a perpetrator. We do not like to be involved in it when it is written for us, in order to protect us. One has the impression of a form of passivity in front of it. Trials, prison... All that is set aside. As if they were managing it for us, without us having to deal with it. It's like politics, it seems too far from us, too far from our reality. It is difficult to understand, which creates mistrust.



The issue of miscarriage of justice is also on everyone's mind, it is frightening. We have the impression that justice is something very square when it is very human. It is always up to the judge to decide on the application of the law. In this space between the judge and the text, anything can happen.

Especially since justice can be invited to the heart of our lives and our secrets.

It sometimes comes to the most intimate. In the context of a divorce, for example, it is sometimes a judge who interferes in the intimacy of our couple. We find ourselves facing a complete stranger who does not speak our language and wants to know everything about us: do we drink often, what our income is or if we still sleep together. Justice is often where there are tensions. She is the one who is supposed to regulate them but it is sometimes illegible.

Most courtrooms are free to access. Why doesn't anyone go?

Because if you haven't learned the language, you won't understand anything. It's long, it's slow, it's hard to understand. Justice must be liberated, it must be given back its citizenship. That is why the disappearance of citizen jurors is very dangerous. The jury is the only place where the citizen is connected to the sentence. This is the only time the people can say something. The jurors always come out very marked by these trials.

Yet there is a fascination for news items and major trials...

We are rather there in the taste of blood. It's more of a fascination with what humans are capable of doing to another human being.

The issue of lack of resources is often raised. Does your festival aim to denounce it?

We are not here to say how to do it. We are here to debate, to show films, to invite specialists who invite reflection. I have the feeling that we only ask ourselves the question of justice when we are confronted with it. But how not to be discouraged when you face such slowness? Yes, we lack judges and yes, they are paid too poorly like caregivers in hospitals or teachers in schools. That is why there are more lawyers than judges.

You also intervene in prison. How do detainees view the justice system that convicted them?

All the inmates I work with are incomprehensible. Even when they have accepted the sentence, they will tell you: there is no justice. The public has the impression that the convicted must pay for their crime. But when we see the recidivism rate, we can say that it does not work. Neither are alternative sentences. Even a criminal who has killed, raped or robbed, something has to be done with it. What is the question? Is locking up criminals in a place populated by criminals effective? The SPIP (prison integration and probation services) work a lot and do what they can but it does not work. Perhaps because justice remains too far removed from its population.

  • Rennes
  • Ille-et-Vilaine
  • Brittany
  • Justice
  • Society
  • Eric Dupond-Moretti
  • Prison
  • Court
  • Festival
  • Interview