Sandrine Grenier, winner of the University of Montpellier’s 2025 Innovation Award

Published on July 9, 2025 in News

LEARNING DIFFERENTLY: LAW AND CINEMA

UM Innovation Award 2025 from the Social Sciences Research Cluster

▶ The “Learning Differently: Law and Film”project is part of an annual course and is designed to be broken down into several sub-projects, one per academic year. The goal is to offer a different approach to law and to convey academic knowledge—which students often find difficult—to them in an indirect and playful way. Film was chosen as a tool for this facilitated learning, with the goal of conveying legal knowledge and/or facilitating methodological understanding through the creation of aesthetically pleasing images. The project was launched during the 2023–2024 academic year.

“Learning Differently: Law and Film” is organized by Sandrine Grenier, Associate Professor of Private Law at the IUT of Béziers, Department of Marketing Techniques, and a member of LICeM, and Sandy Blanco, Professor of Film and Audiovisual Studies at the IUT of Béziers.

To date, the project has two versions:

The Red Satin Chrysalis (Mid-length film)
Highlights in Pictures (Short films)

▶ The Red Satin Chrysalis

The first project is the production of a medium-length film in theGiallo genre—an Italian crime film that enjoyed great success in the 1970s, characterized by its distinctive aesthetic, which continues to influence films and advertisements today. Armed with a solid understanding of the fundamental principles of criminal procedure and having watched major films centered on trials, the students immersed themselves in the complexities of criminal trials through the production of the medium-length film:“La Chrysalide de Satin Rouge.”It is based on cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary work (law and audiovisual studies, commercial communication) that allowed students to immerse themselves in the writing and production of a cinematic sequence and to refine their legal knowledge by mastering the criminal trial process. Designed to be innovative and interactive, the audience can, for a moment, become a jury and be invited to participate.

This project was undertaken with the aim of bringing together a wide range of partners—all of whom are volunteers, whether from the public or private sectors—to foster mutual enrichment and visibility (including, for example, the provision of filming locations and costumes: the cities of Agde, Béziers, Pézenas, and Montpellier; the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Montpellier; the Judicial Court of Béziers; the Court of Appeal of Montpellier; the Montpellier Bar Association’s Artistic Committee; the South Central Bar School; and the fashion houses Caroline Bouvier and Le P’tit Grain de Mil). The idea of bringing together legal, technical, and artistic talents around a shared project, as well as showcasing the architectural and cultural heritage of our region, also motivated the project (filming took place at the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Montpellier, the Municipal Theater of Pézenas, the Vulliod Museum in Saint-Germain-de-Pézenas, the Fayet Museum in Béziers, the Old Cemetery of Béziers, the Hôtel La Prison in Béziers, and Château Laurens in Agde).

▶ Movie trailer

▶ Highlights in pictures

The second approach involved focusing specifically on the task of reading and understanding a court decision—a task traditionally feared by beginners and/or non-specialists given the specific nature of the writing style and the legal vocabulary used. Faced with these challenges, the idea of using film to make reading a court decision more accessible and to encourage students to understand the legal issue raised and the solution applied by the judges was once again proposed. So far, six rulings have been selected by the students and adapted into short films under four minutes in length (three rulings from the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation, one from the Labor Chamber, and two from the^First Civil Chamber).

▶ Three rulings are available online:

Moullec, Criminal Division of the Court of Cassation, November 8, 1972

Fragonard, First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, March 24, 1987

Lacour, Criminal Division of the Court of Cassation, November 25, 1962

▶ Three more video stops are currently in post-production and will soon be posted on the YouTube channel Straight to the Point specifically created for the “Law and Cinema” project of the Marketing Techniques department at the IUT of Béziers. They will be available for other students to view, who, thanks to a playful approach to the court ruling, will also be able to immerse themselves in reading and understanding it.

▶ The " Droit dans l’objectif" channel

https://www.youtube.com/@DROITetCINEMA