"Missing Kelly": a grieving father at the heart of a singular France 2 documentary

Héloïse Goy, with Alexis Patri 11:01 a.m., March 02, 2022

His name is Mike Hudgins, he is 75 years old, he was born and still lives in Cynthiana, Kentucky.

Widowed, he experienced several dramas in his life, including the unexplained death of Kelly, one of his sons whose body was found near a river.

It is the story of this man that directors Laura Froidefond and Antoine Favre tell on Wednesday evening in the documentary 

broadcast in the box of the "25 shades of doc" collection.

The police closed the case of Kelly's death, but Mike continues to lead the investigation himself to find out what happened.

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The "acknowledgement of failure" of a caring father

Laura Froidefond and Antoine Favre had met Mike Hudgins during a previous shoot, before the death of his son Kelly.

"As soon as we met Mike, we knew that the most important thing in his life was to preserve his children", remembers the director at the microphone of Europe 1. "In his opinion, he failed in this mission, since he has lost two of his five children. So to make a film about a father who has built his whole life around his children and who finds himself at the end of his life on a form of acknowledgment of failure, for it made sense to us."

“It is more than an investigation that he is conducting, it is a mourning”, completes his colleague.

"And this mourning is the most impossible to do. So this investigation is the most difficult to solve."

A portrait of the other America

Beyond this investigation, which Mike is determined to carry out until his last breath, the portrait of this man (who has worked all his life without taking vacations) is also an opportunity to show deep America, that of the downgraded, of those who have not realized their American dream.

An America that also voted for Donald Trump.

"Me and my family voted for Trump," Mike says in the documentary.

"I wouldn't say he's crazy. But he's different. And that's exactly why we appreciate him. The other presidents are at the boot of the big shots. Donald Trump says no to them. Well, maybe I'm wrong."

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"We did not make a political film at all. On the other hand, it is true that it speaks to us of this America which always seems far from Europe to us", explains to our microphone Antoine Favre.

"We didn't want to make him a standard bearer, but Mike is in fact a representative of this America which lived a semblance of the American dream after the Second World War, and which now finds itself with an impoverishment and a concentration of wealth. This is an America retiring very late, with very little money."

The film, particularly well made, mixes several temporalities.

We see in particular images filmed with a camcorder of Mike's sons, when they were still children.

Moving and very poignant,

 is broadcast Wednesday evening from 00:05 on France 2. For early risers, the documentary can also be found on france.tv for 60 days.