Netflix documentary 'From Rock Star To Killer' looks back on landmark French domestic violence case

In 2003, the murder of French actress Marie Trintignant at the hands of her partner, singer Bertrand Cantat, opened a conversation on the perception of domestic violence in France.

More than 20 years later, a three-part Netflix documentary released on 27 March, De rockstar à tueur : Le cas Cantat (From Rock Star To Killer), has revived this discourse and shed a new light on the case.

Bertrand Cantat was at the height of his fame in 2003. The 39-year-old singer was the beloved leader of Noir Désir, one of the most successful rock bands in France.

Marie Trintignant was also a star. At 41, she had starred in more than 40 feature films and had received five César Awards nominations.

Cantat and Trintignant were spending the summer in Lithuania, where the actress was shooting a TV film, directed by her mother Nadine Trintignant.

On the night of 26 July 2003, in the couple’s hotel room, a fight broke out between the two over a text sent by Trintignant’s former partner. Bertand Cantat repeatedly hit Trintignant, leaving her unconscious, and failed to call for help for several hours.

Trintignant spent days in a coma and underwent several surgeries. She eventually died from her injuries on 1 August 2003. The postmortem report found that she had received 19 extremely violent punches, definitively ruling out the possibility of an accident.

“A case of this magnitude, between two superstars, was unprecedented in France”, said journalist Anne-Sophie Jahn, who codirected the series.

The documentary focuses on the media coverage of the case. At the time, 14 years before the #MeToo movement erupted, the death of Marie Trintignant was not considered a femicide. The French term féminicide would not enter the dictionary until 2015.

Instead, journalists called Trintignant’s murder a crime passionnel - a crime of passion. The series thoughtfully and efficiently looks back at the headlines that painted Cantat as the victim of his own torments, a man overwhelmed by a consuming passion.

In keeping with the singer’s line of defence, his family and friends spent weeks defending his character on TV, while disparaging Trintignant for being “hysterical” and having four sons with four different men.

The unknown story of Krisztina Rády

Marie Trintignant has since become a symbol of the fight against domestic violence and her case remains widely known in France. However, the documentary also takes a different look at Bertrand Cantat's history of violence through the story of his wife and mother of his two children, Krisztina Rády.

Cantat had left Rády in 2002, just after the birth of their second child, to pursue his relationship with Trintignant. Despite their separation, Rády flew to Vilnius to support Cantat immediately after his arrest.

During Cantat’s 2004 trial in Lithuania, she had assured that her former partner had never been violent towards her, a testimony believed to have favourably influenced his sentence.

The singer was found guilty of murder with indirect intent and convicted to eight years in prison. Rády regularly visited him in jail. Halfway through his sentence, Cantat was released on parole and temporarily went back to live with Rády and their children.

However, they did not resume an exclusive relationship and Rády ended up falling in love with another man. Unable to tolerate it, Cantat began to harass her and watch her every move.

Krisztina Rády committed suicide three years later, in 2010. Cantat, who was still on probation at the time, was cleared of any responsibility.

The series devotes one episode to Rády’s death and exhumes elements – Rády’s suicide note, a tearful voicemail to her parents, a previously unseen E.R. report – showing that she had endured violence following Cantat’s release from jail.

The documentary also argues that Rády had lied in her trial testimony under the influence of Noir Désir members who wanted to protect the band’s success and its leader. Noir Désir eventually split up in 2010.

By shedding light on Rády’s largely unknown story, From Rock Star To Killer paints the picture of a violent man protected by his peers.

Over the years, Cantat has attempted to return to public life. He formed a new band, Détroit, and continued to perform on stage. Détroit funded its latest album through a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than €200,000.

But in the wake of the #MeToo movement, backlash grew stronger. The outrage caused by his appearance on the cover of popular French cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles in October 2017 forced the publication to apologise.

“We [have], and this was not our intention, reignited suffering,” the magazine wrote to its readers a week after the incident. "Putting [Bertrand Cantat] on the cover was questionable. To those who felt hurt, we express our sincere regrets."

In 2025, the conversation surrounding the death of Marie Trintignant is now taking a new, self-reflective turn.

The Netflix show is forcing the protagonists of the story, from the media to law enforcement representatives and friends of Cantat, to look back at their own actions.

“In hindsight, I was perhaps wrong,” said Philippe Laflaquière, the judge who released the singer in 2007. He admitted that he failed to recognize the hold Cantat had over Rády.

A close friend of Marie Trintignant, actress and singer Lio remains one of the few public figures to have consistently defended her. In the 2000s, she was vilified for speaking out.

"I didn't say too loudly [that Bertrand Cantat had killed Marie Trintignant], I think it could have been said much more loudly and clearly at the time. I simply said what had happened", she recalled on French TV last week.

Today, her testimony is an essential part of this documentary, which allows the truth to be heard once and for all.

From Rock Star To Killer, which looks back at the case that divided France, is available to stream on Netflix.