General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

By the Grace of God

By the Grace of God (Grâce à Dieu) is a 2019 French drama film written and directed by François Ozon, based on the case of Bernard Preynat, a Catholic priest in Lyon accused of sexually abusing boy scouts in the 1980s and 1990s, and on the survivors' group that brought the abusers to account¹^•². It follows three men in their 40s, Alexandre, François, and Emmanuel, who were abused as children and join forces to "lift the burden of silence" and seek justice from the Church hierarchy³. The film won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival⁴.

Key fact	Detail
Original title / director	Grâce à Dieu, written and directed by François Ozon; France/Belgium co-production, 137 minutes¹^•³
Real-world basis	The case of Fr. Bernard Preynat of the diocese of Lyon and the survivors' association La Parole Libérée, which gathered testimonies from 85 people²
Main cast	Melvil Poupaud (Alexandre), Denis Ménochet (François), Swann Arlaud (Emmanuel), with François Marthouret as Cardinal Barbarin and Bernard Verley as Preynat⁵^•⁶
Top award	Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, 69th Berlin International Film Festival, 2019⁴
Release	France 20 February 2019; United States limited release 18 October 2019¹^•⁵
Budget and gross	€6,000,000 budget; worldwide gross $7,755,652, of which $66.3K in the United States⁷^•⁵
Reception	96% Tomatometer from 97 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.2/10 on IMDb⁵^•⁷

Spoilers

Story and real-world basis

The film opens with Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud), a practicing Catholic family man in Lyon, who discovers during a Sunday mass that the priest who abused him in the scouts still works with children. He first asks the archbishop to act; when the Church fails to sanction the priest, he files a police complaint⁶^•⁸. His deposition leads investigators to François (Denis Ménochet), whose parents had denounced the same priest in the early 1990s. François, with Alexandre's help, founds the association La Parole Libérée ("Liberated Speech"), and Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud), still damaged by his abuse, joins them⁸.

The characters are semi-fictionalized versions of real members of the survivors' group, which had gathered the testimonies of 85 people who say they were abused by Preynat in Lyon². The film's antagonist in the hierarchy is Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, who was tried with five members of his diocese on charges of covering up and failing to report the abuse; the film reached French cinemas just as judges were preparing the verdict in that first trial related to the scandal².

The title

The title comes from a 2016 press conference in which Barbarin, responding to a question about why he had allowed Preynat to remain in contact with children, gave thanks to God that the alleged abuse dated back too far to be brought to court. The phrase became so well known in Lyon that Ozon used the fake working title "Alexandre" while shooting in secret²^•⁹.

Production

Ozon had first considered treating the Preynat affair as a documentary before deciding on fiction¹⁰. He described the film as made "in the spirit of Spotlight", Tom McCarthy's 2015 film about the Boston Globe's investigation of clerical abuse, though his subject is not an investigation but a grassroots campaign by victims seeking action from the archbishop⁶^•¹¹.

Secrecy shaped the shoot, which ran from 12 February to 7 April 2018 in Paris, the Île-de-France, and Belgium¹². Media were told only that Ozon was working on a project about "three childhood friends who meet again in their 40s", and all interior church scenes were shot in Belgium and Luxembourg so that Ozon would not have to ask Barbarin's permission to film in Lyon. Funding was difficult to secure because of the subject matter². The production received CNC advance-on-receipts support and a €360,000 production grant from the Île-de-France region¹².

Preynat, named in the film, filed an urgent application before the Paris administrative court to have the release date postponed, citing the presumption of innocence¹³.

Reception and awards

At the 69th Berlin International Film Festival the film competed for the Golden Bear and won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize⁴. At the 2020 César Awards it received nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Melvil Poupaud), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing⁴.

Critics noted the departure from Ozon's usual style. The Independent Cinema Office described the film as lacking the director's usual stylistic flourishes, tonal shifts, and sly humor, calling it an ambitious, sober true story⁶. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 96% Tomatometer from 97 reviews, with a critics consensus calling it "patient in its approach yet stirring in its conviction"⁵. Swedish critics grouped by Kritikerne gave it scores mostly around 4 of 5, with Fredrik Sahlin of SVT writing that it is "a film that wants to shed light, not drag things through the mud"¹⁴.

Release and commercial performance

The film was released in France and Switzerland on 20 February 2019, followed by Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain in April 2019³. It opened in the United States in limited release on 18 October 2019 through Music Box Films, grossing $66.3K there⁵. Against a budget of €6,000,000 it earned $7,755,652 worldwide⁷.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026