After an excellent turn playing a deeply compromised prosector in Joachim Lafosse’s A Silence earlier this year, veteran French star Daniel Auteuil is back in lawyerly garb in another true crime courtroom drama.

Grégory Gadebois and Daniel Auteuil in The Thread

In The Thread (Un Fil ) – a reference to a crucial piece of evidence – Auteuil plays Jean Monier, a figure based on real-life criminal lawyer Jean-Yves Moyart, who became well known in France as ‘Maître Mô’ from his blog, which spotlit what he saw as the failings and inequities in the country’s legal system. Moyart died in 2021, aged 53. The Thread recounts a case from the latter part of his career – an example of domestic violence in extremis.

Grégory Gadebois plays Nicolas Milik, a seemingly devoted father to five children and husband to an alcoholic wife, Cecile. After a fight one night, she takes off on one of her frequent benders. Her body is discovered in an abandoned house the next day. Milik is the logical suspect but he’s not the only one. Also accused – of being an accessory to murder at the very...