Missing Kelly

Documentaire
    Réalisé par Antoine Favre, Laura Froidefond • Écrit par Antoine Favre, Laura Froidefond
    France • 2021 • 55 minutes • Couleur
  • N° ISAN :
    ISAN 0000-0005-F91C-0000-1-0000-0000-Y
Résumé

Au crépuscule de sa vie, Mike, un Américain ordinaire du Kentucky, est persuadé que son fils Kelly a été assassiné. La police a classé l’affaire, mais Mike entend bien découvrir la vérité. Tandis qu'il retrace les circonstances de la disparition de son fils, des images du passé lui reviennent, comme autant d’échos fantômes de sa vie. En filigrane se raconte le destin de l’Amérique des déclassés, pour qui le rêve n’est jamais devenu réalité.
À travers le portrait de cet homme simple du sud des États-Unis, ce film propose une plongée dans l’Amérique blanche chrétienne, laborieuse et fière de ses valeurs qui, au tournant du XXIe siècle, affaiblie par la menace terroriste et la crise des subprimes, ravagée par la drogue et le chômage, devient l’Amérique des déclassés. Mike est l’un de ces "oubliés" pour qui le rêve américain n’est jamais devenu réalité et qui, en désespoir de cause, s’est laissé tenter par le vote populiste.

In the twilight of his life, Mike, an ordinary American man from Kentucky, is convinced of one thing: his son Kelly was murdered. The police have closed the case but Mike intends to uncover the truth.
Kelly was last seen in November 2018. Initially, with no body, the police were reluctant to investigate. So Mike offered a reward of $ 10,000 to anyone who would give him information about his son’s disappearance. Then this didn’t work, he sold his house and increased the reward to $ 25,000. Still nothing. When Kelly’s body was finally found in the river, four months after his disappearance, the police classed it as a suicide.
But for Mike, everything suggests that this is murder and not suicide. In front of his computer screen, he sets out the evidence from his investigation: camera images, surveillance of two car parks in the city center on which we can see two figures ghostly in the night, Kelly and another man. He shows us criminal records and ‘wanted’ notices of men he suspects of having killed his son.
In the course of his investigation, the old man reminisces about his past. He wonders about his own trajectory and that of his generation. A history of the American twentieth century emerges. Through the portrait of this "ordinary" man from the southern United States, the film offers an immersion into Christian white America. Mike is one of those "forgotten", for whom the American dream never came true.

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