Beyond Hatred

Beyond Hatred
Cover of Peccadillo Pictures 2007 DVD release (region 2)
Directed byOlivier Meyrou
Written byOlivier Meyrou
Produced byChristophe Girard
Katharina Marx
CinematographyFlorian Bouchet
Jean-Marc Bouzou
Emma Fernández
Edited byCathie Dambel
Jérome Pey
Music byFrançois-Eudes Chanfrault
Distributed byPeccadillo Pictures (UK)
Release date
  • June 19, 2005 (2005-06-19)
Running time
86 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench

Beyond Hatred (French: Au-delà de la haine) is a 2005 French documentary film written and directed by Olivier Meyrou.

The documentary tells the story of a French couple seeking justice and feeling acceptance after the homophobic murder of their gay son, 29-year-old Francois Chenu. He was murdered by three white power skinheads in 2002, who beat him severely in the face and threw him into a pond.[1][2][3][4] The attackers were arrested one month after the incident, and Meyrou read about the case on the front page of Le Monde.[4] He had been wanting to make a film about homophobia for some time, and decided that the Chenu case was very emblematic.

The film's French television premiere was on 19 June 2005; Eurozoom distributed the film's French theatrical release the following year. It was shown at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival, the Paris Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and the 2007 London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. It had a limited theatrical release in the United States on 15 June 2007, distributed by First Run Features.

Rotten Tomatoes gave Beyond Hatred a "fresh" rating of 89% based on 18 reviews.[5] Metacritic gave it a "generally favorable" rating of 65% based on five reviews.[6] The documentary won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.[7]

Notes

  1. ^ 56th Berlin Film Festival-Part 3 The work of theatre director Robert Wilson and other documentary films
  2. ^ NOW Magazine - Movies in Toronto, NOVEMBER 23 - 29, 2006 Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ One World 2007 Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ a b Phillips, Richard (2006-08-03). "An interview with Olivier Meyrou, director of Beyond Hatred". World Socialist Website. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
  5. ^ "Beyond Hatred". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on July 13, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
  6. ^ "Beyond Hatred (2007)". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
  7. ^ Warbler, Daniel (2 June 2014). "THE OUT TAKE: 10 FANTASTIC TEDDY AWARD-WINNING LGBT FILMS TO WATCH RIGHT NOW". mtv.com. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018. Retrieved 9 September 2018.