The film, presented Friday and Saturday at Critics' Week, opens with the irruption of police officers into an apartment.
They come to arrest a man on the run with his daughter, whom he asks to dress and make up like an adult.
"It's not his fault, I'm here because I want to be," shouts Dalva (Zelda Samson), a pre-teen with childish features.
From this scene, the viewer embarks on a vertiginous exploration of the mechanisms of influence.
"Monsters do not exist in my opinion. He is a man who loves his daughter. Badly, but he loves her," said the director (36), in an interview with AFP.
His film, in which sexual violence never appears on screen, took four and a half years to see the light of day.
To document herself, Emmanuelle Nicot, a Frenchwoman living in Belgium, visited a center welcoming abused children in the west of France.
"What moved me was that I met many children who had been taken from their families because of abuse, and who continued to defend them in the face of justice," she said. Explain.
"All of them were in some form of defense mechanism, denial, extremely strong."
Like her character, who will be collected in one of these centers and rub shoulders with children of her age, under the severe but benevolent eye of an educator (Alexis Manenti, seen in "Les Miserables").
Zelda Samson was only 11 when she heard about casting for the film.
Her parents gave her permission and here she is in Cannes.
Despite this, she does not see herself becoming an actress, and rather dreams of astrophysics.
Her intense interpretation is reminiscent of that of Emilie Dequenne in "Rosetta" by the Dardenne brothers, which also won the Palme d'Or in 1999.
© 2022 AFP