Back to Normandy DVD, 2005

In 1975, director Nicolas Philibert (Etre et Avoir) was a young assistant to filmmaker René Allio. Together, they made 'Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère' ('I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother') a little-seen film based on the true story of a peasant who murdered his family in 1835.

All the main parts in 'I, Pierre Rivière' were played by non-professional actors from the very region in which the events took place. Here, thirty years after the film's release, Philibert takes his camera back to Normandy to learn about the lives of its actors during the intervening years. Shuttling between 1975, the present day and the events of the nineteenth century, Philibert creates yet another captivating documentary.