For his first feature film, A worldin which she immerses us in the ordinary horror of schoolyards, the Belgian filmmaker Laure Wandel preferred to go towards anthropology, even sociology, rather than autobiography.
“In school and, above all, when entering school, there is something that we all experience, she explains to the Homework in videoconference. What really interested me were the first issues of integration and the need for recognition because these are moments that we have all experienced. This time of school influences more things than we think in our way of being as adults and in our very way of seeing the world. This first moment is fundamental in our identity construction, it is the basis of humanity. »
This humanity, Nora (Maya Vanderbeque), seven years old, will be violently confronted with it when she will be the helpless witness of the intimidation suffered by her older brother Abel (Günter Duret). While she wants to be accepted by the other girls, the little schoolgirl will try to protect her brother… At the risk of making things worse.
To illustrate the shock of discovering this merciless universe, Laure Wandel chose to shoot at child’s height, to reveal in bits and pieces this school which seems immense with its many corridors and stairways where danger lurks.
“The child discovers a new place and I wanted to create a loss of spatio-temporal relationship as the child experiences it. He doesn’t know what time it is, doesn’t recognize places, doesn’t know how to measure them, he is completely lost. I had the impression that by filming at the height of a child, it was the best way since my objective was to send the spectator back to this first time of school, that he live it in a physical way. , not just intellectual. It was very important that the spectator live an immersive experience, that he almost becomes Nora. »
The director also wanted to stick to reality. To this end, she spoke with parents, teachers, school principals. During the three months of preparation for the shoot with the children, who had to create the puppet of their character and draw their scenes in order to distinguish between their life and the fiction, she was able to collect their experiences and rewrite her dialogues. in their words.
“At the audition, Maya, who was seven years old at the time, said to me as she walked into the room, ‘I want to give all my strength to this film.’ Günter witnessed harassment and Maya was victimized; I think she wanted to defend something. Obviously, I also started from certain personal memories, but it was really important for me to open the field of vision to feed a certain reality and try to make this story as universal as possible. »
Communicating vessels
Apart from the violence that Maya witnesses, what disturbs the most in A worldit is to note that the roles are going to be reversed, that the victims and the executioners change places without finding a logical explanation.
“Very often it happens like that. This is something I have been able to discuss with child psychiatrists. There is someone in Belgium who specializes in bullying, Bruno Hennepin, who told me that the line between the bully and the bullied is very fine because the bully is the victim. A child who is violent often means that he is reacting to something, that his desire has not been recognized. Moreover, Laure Wandel never reveals why Günter is the victim of bullying from her classmates. Nothing in particular sets him apart from the other boys. No more than Nora, who will have an easier time making friends.
“It’s often a matter of attitude, like lowering your gaze. I was interested in starting with a child crying in her brother’s arms. Automatically, the spectators think that it is she who is going to be harassed: it is a question of a priori and labels. »
It is to refer to this question that the filmmaker chose not to leave the schoolyard or to show the family: “It was to allow the spectator to build an image of this family. We do not know if the father is really unemployed, it is the children who deduce that. We also don’t know why the mother is absent. What interested me above all was to see the gaze of other children who question this normality and to see Nora’s gaze change on her father. The foundation of violence is preconceptions, judgment. »
Knowing that her role is not to provide a solution to school bullying, Laure Wandel argues, however, that this problem is not only at the school level, but above all at the level of society.
“It’s the concern for performance, everything is going very quickly, we no longer have time to listen to the other, to put ourselves in the other’s place. We judge the other because it goes much faster than trying to understand him. I think just changing that would change everything. »
In France and Belgium, A world was presented in several schools. Thanks to these screenings, children who have been bullied were able to talk about their experience and invite their parents to watch the film with them.
“A lot of teachers ask to see the film. I didn’t imagine at all at the start that I would make a useful work because I saw it more as a “cinematographic object”. The fact that it is also becoming an educational tool is extraordinary”, concludes Laure Wandel.