Restorative justice and the role of community in All Your Faces: a film analysis

This article examines the representation of community within restorative justice (RJ) in the French film All Your Faces (Je verrai toujours vos visages, 2023), addressing central debates within RJ scholarship concerning the meaning, place, and function of community in restorative processes. By analysing the film’s verbal and visual dimensions, the article examines how community is represented and enacted through relationships, interactions, spatial arrangements, and restorative practices. The analysis identifies three forms of community: prison as a space in which multiple communities intersect; the participatory community that emerges within the restorative circle; and communities of care that support victims and offenders throughout the restorative process. Across these dimensions, All Your Faces portrays community as an evolving social process rather than a fixed category of participants. Community is progressively produced through ritualized interaction, storytelling, humor, collective vulnerability, recognition, and practices of care. These findings shift attention from who constitutes the community in RJ to how community is enacted through restorative practices and relationships. The article contributes to interdisciplinary scholarships at the intersection of sociology, law, criminology, and victimology by conceptualizing community as a relational and institutional accomplishment. It also demonstrates the value of film as a site for examining how restorative justice practices and values are culturally imagined, interpreted, and communicated to wider publics.