School harassment up to children: a world comes out in the cinema and it's a real slap!

Cour d’école. Une petite fille pleure à l’idée d’intégrer un monde inconnu. Elle s’accroche à son grand frère habitué des lieux, l’implorant de ne pas la laisser seule. Déjà le cadre est comme à genoux, à hauteur de ces deux petits êtres à la complicité évidente, que l’on va suivre alors qu’ils pénètrent cet espace a priori protégé, au sein duquel l’adulte n’a pas (plus) le droit de rentrer.

This opening scene immediately overwhelming poses the foundations of what the sensitive Laura Wandel wins us, which we met in Cannes in July 2021, within a small garden as isolated (but more secure!) that the world apart that she describes in her film, "that of childhood and school in which the child discovers things for the first time, is in confrontation outside the family to a newMicrocosm and learns social codes. A time when seeds are sown in us, repercussions later as an adults and influence our behavior within society. "

Possible breeding ground for violence, the school is indeed this closed and reduced space which questions the "notion of territoriality which echoes the conflicts of the world in general", in particular via the football field "which in Belgium takes the majority of the'space "and therefore confine those who do not play it.

Enclosed space, violent space, but also space reduced to the image of the child's vision over the world.The bias is clear for the director: never get out of school, do not enter the family universe and, in order to place the spectator in immersion and help him remember the things experienced children or by his children,Never leave the intense blue gaze of the heroine of the film, whose inner path is followed.A point of view which often leaves literally out of scope, adults who are eager to do well, whether it is the father (Karim Leklou always as physical, intense and charismatic) or the teacher (Laura Verlinden with rare tenderness).

"There was really a desire not to make judgments on the actions of adults who are trying to do as they can. But in all the mechanisms of violence, it is difficult to identify where it starts, the root of things.A child who makes another suffer is himself suffering in a certain sense, he lacked listening and benevolence and I tried to transmit this in particular with the director's scene where we can feel that the father of the littleAntoine is not benevolent and that his violence does not come from nowhere. "

While it underlines the impossibility of acting from the characters, the off -field makes the spectator more active, "bodily, not only intellectually" according to the wishes of the filmmaker: indeed, during the 1h13 film, weLet us feel committed viscerally alongside his moving heroes, embodied by two young prodigious actors that we should never take their eyes off.

Maya Vanderbeque and Gunter Duret: They were that day in Cannes, in front of us as intense as their characters, answering our questions with pleasure, referring with frankness their emotion to the reactions of the room during the projection of the day, happy withWear this subject which - they reassure us when we ask them the question - "We speak most at school, especially in class advice".If Gunter has already played before, it is the first time for Maya who immediately impressed us with her commitment: "I knew as soon as I saw Laura that I wanted to be on this film, to be with her, and C 'Is that why I said to him "I will give everything for the film", that is to say all my strength ", she tells us.

A force that bursts the screen, put at the service of an endearing character when he learns to decipher not the words as we do to the CP but the behaviors of those around him: "I wanted to show more'Social learning that the intellectual learning of matters. Learning the relationship to the other, which is done differently according to the two children, "recognizes the director.

Indeed, "Abel is quite shy, he wants not to get things done. He cannot face the harassment he undergoes, and lives a real dilemma. In the meantime, he lets his sister Nora andStays behind. Nora who tries to protect her brother from the harassment he undergoes seeks the right solution, as an adult should do so, alongside his teacher who is the only one to realize, "continue the children.

Find the right gesture, the right way to help the other ... A very complicated question, "a complex mechanism with different layers", which beyond learning violence also questions the transmission of benevolence.Benevolence that will pass here not through words but through the body because it is felt and transmitted without saying.At the heart of the film, it is also played, it is time to talk about it, the evolution of the privileged relationship or not between a big brother and his little sister, in full interior path:

"Nora is very hung and thinks that her brother will help her integrate this community. She will realize the difficulties that he is going through, will try to protect her from that because he is ashamed and does not want her tosees in these difficulties, he wants to remain protective. At one point, he will become bulky for her in her need to integrate. "When his friends question the status of his unemployed father, or his victim brother, will indeed be felt the rejection born of "the need to correspond to the mass at the expense of his own identity", summarizes Laura Wandel.

To illustrate the evolution of the feelings that animate the two children, a real scriptwriting find consists in bringing them together more disunited than ever under the objective of a photographer during the traditional class photo.At that time, the smile is frozen, the latent conflict: "Nora feels violence and rejects her own rejection of violence on her brother who will tip her moment to him who is reintegrating. He's goinghimself experiment with another violence, feel that he can have a power over the other and will taste this power ".

This exercise of power is played out in particular in a very difficult scene where the young boy expresses as he can his rebellion."It is not certain scenes that have been difficult to do but it is precisely the emotions to play that were," explains Gunter Duret, before detailing their work with a dedicated coach, Perrine Bigot, present during the interviewBy their side: "A year before turning, we worked in activity without having the script. We had to do something similar to what we were told without thinking too much, but we had to remain spontaneous. For each scene,We were given the subject, the course without detail and we made an improvisation ".

We started one of the scenes, we explained the starting situation and we proposed to discuss what could happen, what we could say and we improvised around that at the level of their body and we drew it onA card that has become their visual scenario.At the time of filming, we came out card 5, sequence 5 and we knew what the scene was made, "explains Laura Wandel. The important thing being to always keep interest, fun and thus give birth to emotion.

Anger, different resistances, guilt, initiation to a world for which they do not yet have arms: the film brews with great emotion precisely and a rare intelligence the war that is played in the eyes of a child, whosefight is important and to accompany.

This week, in theaters, discover this first film, heart and punch of the Cannes Festival, which gave birth to a talent and especially a look;A new world, that of Laura Wandel, worthy heiress of Kiarostami or Dardenne when it comes to putting in pictures with elegance and purity of small pieces of humanity ....

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