Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Some 20 years ago, two sex workers were murdered in an upper-class Brussels neighborhood. Celebrated Belgian magistrate Anne Gurwez decides to revisit this cold case, pouring over the evidence with the use of new technologies and tracking down then-suspects.
So Help Me God (also known as Au nom du père et du fils et de Jean-Marie Pfertzel in some markets, or more commonly Je me nomme as its Belgian release) follows magistrate Anne Gurwez with an almost uncomfortably intimate access as she re-investigates a cold case involving murdered sex workers in Brussels. The documentary's novelty lies in its remarkable fly-on-the-wall access to actual judicial proceedings and interrogations — a genuinely rare vantage point that makes courtroom drama feel viscerally real rather than reconstructed. The cinematography is functional but not artistically ambitious, serving the observational style. The plot, driven by the real investigation, is compelling in its procedural detail but can feel meandering given the nature of cold-case documentary work. Acting is not applicable in a traditional sense, though Gurwez herself is a compelling on-screen presence. The ending is somewhat anticlimactic, as the nature of the unresolved or ambiguous case outcome leaves viewers without cathartic closure — a documentary limitation, but one that still affects the viewing experience.