Quoi après ?

Three months after his birth, Etienne, the little brother of Yannick Coutheron, underwent serious brain operations, the after-effects of which seriously impaired his physical and mental capacities. The life of his family was totally disrupted and reorganised itself around the handicapped child. At the age of sixteen and a half, Etienne succumbed to a crisis of epilepsy. After this bereavement, "Quoi après ?" is the question with which each member of the family is intensely faced. All three seem isolated in their own cocoon of grief, silence and feelings of guilt. "Our need for consolation is impossible to satisfy", declares the elder brother who decides to create around this absence a film in the first person. Alone, Yannick writes, frames and edits this sincere and discreet testimony. As the story unfolds, he recalls in voice of his own memories, revisits the empty room of Etienne where his familiar possessions, his drawings, his photographs still remain. At the same time, he engages in a dialogue with his parents and arouses in them the intimate expression of emptiness which resonates like the echo of his own suffering. But he is also keen to observe the first steps taken to come to terms with everyday life without Etienne ; moving house, his mother's return to active life or his parents' fit of the giggles around the computer. It seems that in the course of filming, Yannick and his family have recovered the strength to share, to confront the absence. A rare and universal emotion arises from this film which could have been entitled : the living. Yann-Olivier Wicht – translation : Angela Benne