RAPACES

“Crime stories in the news have always inspired novels and films. They started to get a lot of visibility on television with the popularity of programs like Faites entrer l’accusé, and just as fast, they conquered the streaming platforms, which made them their top draws. Crime stories are fascinating because they are true: ‘that’s just the way it happened,’ ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ Not only: the same case can be judged mediocre or sublime, comic or tragic – everyone can identify with it. Observing these stories from a distance, they can be considered a form of entertainment. You laugh as a way to shield yourself from the idea that something like that could ever happen to you. […] Above all, a crime story in the news allows us to understand our own age in a sociological way; it also tells us truths that certain novels just touch on. As far as I’m concerned, I got into the subject when I made my film Vaurien. I’d read up on Parisian serial killers from the 1990s, like Guy Georges, Mamadou Traoré, and Patrick Trémeau, and it exhausted me. Those stories ultimately evoked male dominance, although, at that time, no one was talking about the patriarchal society or femicides. I tend to be an observer in life. In the fifteen years I spent at the Samu Social organization in Paris, ordinary violence, called ‘crime news,’ was, you could say, my daily bread. Certainly, something of that period has carried over to my writing.” (Peter Dourountzis)

Peter Dourountzis’s first feature film, Vaurien, was about a rapist and serial killer played by Pierre Deladonchamps. A former student at the ESRA Film School in Paris, Dourouontzis has made several short films, one of which, Errance (2014), won the Grand Prix Unifrance and was awarded best film at the Amiens Festival. Vultures marks his return to filmmaking after a five-year hiatus.