UN MONDE/ PLAYGROUND

Belgium, 2021, 78 minutes, Colour.

Maya Vanderbeque, Gunter Duret.

Directed by Laura Wandel.

In 2002, director, Nicholas Philibert, made a classic documentary about primary school education, focusing on a rural school with children, 4-11, just one teacher, Etre et Avoir, To Be and To Have.

Almost 20 years later, here is a significant primary school film to be placed alongside Philibert’s classic.

This is a brief film, set entirely in a school playground in Belgium, the camera and filming always at the eye level of children, enabling/forcing audiences to see from the child’s perspective.

There is an extraordinary performance by the nine-year-old Maya Vanderbeque as Nora. At a new school, initially unwilling as she farewells her father who drops her at the gate, venturing in, reticent and shy, seeing her gradually changing, relating, finding some friends, helped by teachers. But, there is her older brother, Abel, who is bullied by a group of boys, sometimes quite brutally, bashed, head in the toilet, thrown into a garbage bin…

And this has an effect, rather bewildering, on Nora. Her brother tells her not to tell their father but eventually she does, with some remedying of the situation – except the bad effect on Abel, and his indulging in some bullying himself.

The brief running time, the focus is very much on the playground, the children, behaviour in the playground, play, bullying, and some classroom sequences, the swimming pool, athletics.

The film does end with a plaintive sequence between brother and sister – not without hope.

1. The title, the world of the playground, a children’s world, teachers’ world, paralleling the adult world, friendships and conflicts?
2. The location, the gates of the school, the playground itself, interiors, classrooms, swimming pools, exercise? The musical score?
3. The technique of the camera at children’s eye level, the audience viewing situations and people at children’s eyelevel?
4. Nora’s story, the strong performance and sense of reality, new school, arriving with her father, her brother ahead of her, her reluctance, tears, resistance, finally telling her name?
5. Nora’s growth and change during the period, her age, quiet, not making friends, gradually making contact, meals, classes, the playground, conversations, the other girls, some reluctance, gradual friendship, the possibility of going to Victoire’s party? The observing of the bullying of her brother, trying to help, his resistance, not to tell their father, her deciding to tell him, the consequences for her brother, for her?
6. Nora, growing in strength, determination, her difficulties in class, reading, writing on the board, athletics, falling, the swimming?
7. Abel, his age, the bullying, the four boys, their arrogance, punching in the playground, head in the toilet, putting him in the bin? His reactions, not telling his father? Nora and her intervention, seeing Abel in the bin, the meeting of the parents, the forced apologies, focus on Nora’s face and her hearing the apologies and the shaking hands?
8. Nora, the discussions with her father, his not having a job, his explanations, her embarrassment?
9. The sympathetic teachers, listening, talking, helping Nora? The other teachers, discipline, busy? Stopping fights?
10. The change in Abel, the small boy, the bullying, the bag over the head? Nora, her reaction, her misbehaviour in class, stubbornness and throwing things, out in the corridor? Her coming to the rescue of the boy against her brother?
11. The final scene, the brother and his transition from bully to bullying, Nora and the embrace, the embrace of the two?