Credibility lessons: gender, justice, and believability in Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall

Justine Triet’s 2023 film Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama about a woman on trial for the suspicious death of her husband. We argue that the woman, a successful author of autofiction, and her young son learn to become increasingly authoritative witnesses by absorbing the law’s lessons about the rhetorical and narrative dimensions of testimony. We examine how two linked strategies in particular – hesitation and repetition – enable mother and son to traverse the triangulated realms of autofiction, the courtroom, and private life, carrying their knowledge from the affective and intimate realm of family emotion into the public realm. They overcome the law’s bias against women and children as testimonial agents by highlighting how testimonial authority derives more from persuasion than facts.