Jacques Weber, François Morel, François Berléand, Julie Gayet, but also Isabelle Gélinas, Pascal Elbé, François-Xavier Demaison, or even Niels Arestrup, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Lambert Wilson, Catherine Frot, Charles Berling, André Dussollier… They are thirty .
Thirty actors and actresses to have accepted, at the invitation of the actress and director of the theater Antoine Stéphanie Bataille, to lend their voices to bear testimonies of relatives of Covid-19 victims in short videos online this Wednesday, March 17 at the occasion of the first anniversary of confinement.
Facing the camera, in their homes for the most part, they read in a blank voice the moving testimonies which tell the distress of people who could not accompany their father or their mother towards death.
Who could not say goodbye to them.
Letters addressed to the deceased sometimes, to ask forgiveness for the abandonment imposed by a frightened administration, or for not having known - could - do otherwise and protect the loved one.
Terrible words and stories that have flocked to Stéphanie Bataille since she told how her father, actor Etienne Draber, died last January.
Entered the hospital for a heart operation in December, he contracted the Covid and died in January after being isolated from his relatives, having only been able to see them at the last moment, just before dying.
He was 81 years old.
"Sacralize the right to visit the sick"
Animated by a sadness as deep as her anger, she has since fought for the hospitalization conditions of Covid patients to evolve, for a return to more humanity in the hospital.
She created the Tenir ta main collective - on the site of which we can see all the videos, as well as that of the Ethics and Pandemic group in which she participates - with Laurent Frémont, who lived the same tragedy.
They want to alert people to the situation and "make the sick person's visiting rights sacred".
“It is a fundamental right, we know how important it is when we are in the hospital to feel surrounded.
Isolated, the patients allow themselves to die, medicine calls it a slippage, I call it dying of sadness, ”she asserts.
“I had the opportunity to visit him the day before his death.
She was in her bed, she had her hands tied, a mask set to 15 liters of oxygen and a back corset that chewed her back… She looked at me in despair through the mask, I could read her lips :
I'm sick of it.
These words are those of a woman who saw her mother leave after a month of isolation.
Isabelle Gélinas read them.
"It's inhuman and dangerous"
"There is a problem there, it does not go what happens, we must react", protests the actress, who participates to bring her support as much to the person of Stéphanie Bataille as to her "just cause".
“It is essential to be able to accompany our dead ... Otherwise, how do we mourn?
she asks.
I can't imagine what Stéphanie and all these people are going through.
It's inhuman and dangerous, things have to change, we can't let people go alone.
"
Newsletter The list of our desires
Our favorites for fun and culture.
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
“We are living in a dramatic period, where everyone is suffering and I wanted to testify to the distress of certain people, including Stéphanie,” confides François Berléand.
I was very moved, because Stéphanie could have written this letter, it's the same story.
To read these testimonies is to say what is happening in order to try to put all this in order, and for there to be more humanity in the hospitals.
"
"I find it very beautiful that these testimonies are carried by actors," says Stéphanie Bataille.
I sent them these letters with the consent of relatives, and in one day they all sent me their video.
By reading these testimonies, they make them universal, but they are, because my story is their story, and it is also your story.
"
