Polisse

Maïwenn's third feature took the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2011 and became one of the biggest French box-office successes of that year, with more than two million admissions. She spent months observing the Brigade de Protection des Mineurs before writing it, and much of the dialogue comes from cases the unit actually handled.

The structure is deliberately unshaped: a series of interviews, arrests and station-house arguments, with an ensemble including Karin Viard, Marina Foïs, Joeystarr and Maïwenn herself as the photographer sent to document them. There is no case running through the film and no arc for the unit to complete. What accumulates instead is the specific damage of the work — officers who can no longer speak normally to their own children, humour that has turned entirely defensive.

Viard took the César for Best Supporting Actress and the film won for editing, which is where its real craft sits: scenes cut off at the moment they become unbearable, then resumed hours later in a different room. It belongs beside Riot Police in the catalogue as the other great European procedural about what institutions do to the people inside them.