Les Avocats du "salopard"

In December 2000, the French were stunned to learn the name of Émile Louis, a former bus driver, in a criminal affair called the “The Missing Girls of the Yonne.” He was charged with the kidnapping and murder of seven young girls with mild mental deficiencies who had disappeared from a home for the handicapped, between 1977 and 1979, in the region of Auxerre. The suspect confessed to the crimes during his custody, then retracted in the presence of the examining magistrate. Four lawyers took the defense of his “unconventional” defendant, a “public enemy no. 1.” They first met in Draguignan in March 2004, during the first court hearings.
This film follows them. From the first hearings to the work sessions of the four-man defense team, from their exchanges with the judicial press to their lunch breaks, the film goes behind the scenes of the trial and examines the "syntax" of the lawyer’s profession in all its complexity and apparent nobility: defending a "bastard". This film is the first part of a trilogy on our rapports with law and justice.