“The language of the law is not the language of everyday life,” warns one of the seven actors in Asuntos familiares, a play and documentary by Émilie Rousset that explores the gaps in the judicial system and the impacts these gaps can have on people’s daily lives.

Based on interviews conducted in various European countries, the work brings together diverse voices: lawyers and litigators specializing in LGBTIQ+ rights, mothers of children who have been victims of sexual violence, an officer with the Mossos d’Esquadra (the regional police force of Catalonia, Spain), and even an Italian father of a child born via surrogacy; and brings them together with silenced testimonies of incest and cases won before the European Court of Human Rights.

In a courtroom, a woman shares the difficulty of reporting incest in front of her children, while lawyers warn of the dangers of legal interpretation. Despite some progress, institutional violence persists: slow, cold, and at times incomprehensible. Thus, Rousset succeeds in bringing to the stage the opacity of a system that claims to speak the truth but often overlooks the human element.