At 6am on a Tuesday in May 2013, the half-charred, petrol-doused body of a young woman was found on a residential street in Lagny-sur-Marne, 25km east of Paris. It was 21-year-old Maud Maréchal, who had been returning at night from a friend’s house to her family home, just a few metres from where she was killed. A neighbour discovered the corpse, the police fruitlessly investigated this horrific murder, and then Maréchal’s death was filed away, hardly noticed by the French press.
Until now. A fictionalised account of the murder, The Night of the 12th by Franco-German director Dominik Moll, has just swept the boards at France’s Oscars equivalent, the César awards, reviving interest in the Maréchal case. But only, thinks Moll, because he made a point of mentioning her during his speech for best film: “It was important to remind people there was a real victim, and her name was Maud,” says the director, speaking over Zoom from his home in Montreuil, 20km from where the young woman lived. “But then quite a few journalists started to talk about the real case, and some of them not in a very responsible way.”
