Fourniret, Dils… Why Yves Rénier liked to bring big business to the screen

ARCHIVES

Actor and director Yves Rénier, who notably played commissioner Moulin for more than 25 years on TF1, died this Saturday at the age of 78. Passionate about various facts, Yves Rénier left his mark on the small screen by directing successful TV films inspired by major legal cases. Some will remember "Jacqueline Sauvage, it was him or me" which was the best audience of the year 2018 for a French fiction, with more than 8 million televiewers. Yves Rénier had mentioned two other of his productions on the Lagardère group's radios: the

2021

film 

which deals with the Michel Fourniret affair, on RFM, and the TV movie

on the Patrick Dils affair at the microphone of Europe 1 in 2018. "I find that [these cases are] a mirror of our time," he explained on RFM.

>> Find Europe evening weekend in podcast and in replay here

"Somewhere, it represents us. It's a bit us"

For him, these court cases were akin to "a reflection of our society". "Somehow, it represents us. It's a bit like us," he said. When it was pointed out to him that some of the news items he dealt with were terrible, he simply noticed that "there are sides that are not good in society." Regarding 

, a film which traces the beginning of the Fourniret affair and the hunt for the serial killer and his wife, Monique Olivier, Yves Rénier said that he was notably "interested" in the "real fusional encounter" between these two people. "It's also a love story," he said, while specifying that he was "on the side of the victims".

In 

in 2018, it was also a victim of miscarriage of justice that he was interested.

In this TV movie broadcast at the time on France 2, he returned to the itinerary of Patrick Dils, wrongly convicted in 1989 and at 16 years of age for the murder of two children before being finally acquitted 15 years later.

The tribute to the mother of Patrick Dils

To make this TV movie, Yves Rénier had to show the perseverance of a passionate person. "I wanted to make a film on Dils and I proposed it to the channel", he told Philippe Vandel's microphone on Europe 1. "I went to find him several times but each time he said no." Finally, it was by proposing a version in which he highlighted the fight of Patrick Dils' mother that Yves Rénier had managed to convince the former inmate.

"Yves Rénier came to me several times to offer me this TV movie project. But it was not the moment or I did not want to hear about it," said Patrick Dils on Europe 1. "But when he returned the last time towards me by changing her perspective and highlighting especially the fight of my mother, I said yes because it was necessary to pay tribute to this exceptional woman, a courageous, determined mother, who never doubted my innocence. She did everything to get me out of this mess. " This reality of society too, Yves Rénier will have brought to the screen.