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Based on a True Story: This Lars von Trier-Style Thriller Is Too Scary to Be True

Stills from the movie 'Maldoror' (2024)

This is a real timeline of pain based on a nightmare that actually happened.

The thriller Maldoror has been released - a film by Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz, inspired by the real case of serial killer Marc Dutroux.

In the film, a gendarme named Paul Chartier, the son of a prostitute and a criminal, tries to catch a serial killer. He goes against the system, plunges into the swamp of corruption and bureaucracy and almost drowns. Most of the events in the film are copied from reality, albeit under fictitious names.

Maldoror : filmed in a way that gives you goosebumps

Director Fabrice Du Welz has made an almost documentary film. He takes one of the darkest pages of Belgian history and gives it a new sound. Young gendarme Paul Chartier is on the trail of a pedophile, behind whom stands the mafia, connections in power and the silence of an entire country. Evil grows under the cover of indifference. All this is not fantasy, but reality, only with different names.

The film is shot in the spirit of Dogma - a shaky camera, almost complete absence of artificial light, no glossy shots. For example, Lars von Trier shoots like this. Sometimes it seems that you are watching a chronicle, not a feature film. The actors are local residents. The only episode where joy flashes is a wedding, filmed at the level of a home video - and even that is quickly erased by darkness.

Maldoror: When One Against All

Paul Chartier is not an action hero. He doesn't shoot, he doesn't scream, he doesn't take revenge. He just goes all the way until the system itself stops him. It doesn't matter that he found the truth - he is punished for it.

Maldoror is not about an investigation. This is a film about how evil gets into the cracks if you pretend for too long that it doesn't exist. This is a story that doesn't want to be watched to the end - but which does not let go. Because it is made for real. Because it is based on what happened - and, perhaps, is still happening.

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