From the first images, the film – broadcast live on January 26 on the channel and between January 19 and April 25 online – evokes the tragic end of the actress.

"I would not like her to age (...). I believe that she should never die", launches her father Jean-Louis, sacred monster of the cinema, looking at the camera.

"But I'm going to die and grow old," says Marie, smiling.

"Alas Marie no, you haven't had time to grow old", retorts Nadine in voiceover.

She addresses her child as in a love letter: "Like so many battered women, you received a first blow. When you wanted to leave this man, he persisted in destroying you, in erasing your si beautiful face, to tear you away from life".

The 87-year-old director never filmed again after her daughter's disappearance.

"I regret it today", she confides to AFP, "I loved making films".

"The last five films I made, I wrote and shot them with Marie", she says.

Afterwards, "I said, I'm only going to write, I'm not going to shoot".

His documentary is devoted almost exclusively to the career of his daughter, which began in a sensational way at the age of 17 in "Série Noire" by Alain Corneau, his stepfather, alongside Patrick Dewaere.

Actress Marie Trintignant, January 1, 2000 in Biarritz DANIEL VELEZ AFP / Archives

Nadine Trintignant explains that she did not want her daughter to be kept as the only image of a battered woman, who died at the age of 41 in Vilnius (Lithuania) in August 2003.

"I will never forgive"

"It's a very happy documentary and only about the profession, because she didn't want any intrusions into her private life," she describes.

The four sons of Marie, born of four different fathers, are hardly mentioned.

On the other hand, we see a lot of directors, actors like Guillaume Depardieu, also deceased, with whom Marie shot three films, including "Comme elle respire".

He launches that "she is not boring like all the other actresses and that in addition she smells good".

Actress Marie Trintignant and filmmaker Alain Corneau, May 12, 1979 at the Cannes Film Festival RALPH GATTI AFP / Archives

Making this documentary "brought me to see Marie laughing", says Nadine.

"I had not seen her for a very long time, even in film".

The director also addresses the death of her daughter Pauline at only nine months old when Marie was eight years old.

"You liked to hold her in your arms, you liked to laugh with her. And then one dark day in Rome, impossible to tell you, your sister died," she said, in a voiceover.

"I would take a long time to understand that in a couple, when you lose a child, you no longer expect much from life", writes Nadine in a book devoted to her first husband, Jean-Louis, entitled "It's for life or for a moment", published in November 2021.

But, she assures him: "you can live with an open wound."

She does not want to hear about Bertrand Cantat, the singer of Noir Désir, sentenced to eight years in prison in Lithuania in 2003 for having dealt fatal blows to Marie, and released in 2007.

Actress Marie Trintignant, November 30, 1983 in Nice RALPH GATTI AFP / Archives

Contacted by AFP, Universal (which owns the catalog of Noir Désir and had released "Amor Fati", a solo album by Cantat in 2017 whose last concert dates had been canceled) refused to comment.

"It's out of the question for me to forgive him. True forgiveness is forgetting what you've been wronged. I'll never forget, I can't, so I won't forgive never," says Nadine Trintignant.

"I had never hated anyone in my life, I did not know hate. And hate is something excruciating to feel, which destroys you, which hurts you. Now I know it".

© 2022 AFP