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Seen in Zanzibar, Tanzania via @onfilmzanzibar

The schoolyard is a psychological minefield in Playground, Wandel’s stomach-churning debut. As the film is released in the UK, she reveals t

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"Her mother answered a regular casting call and for that call, there was just a very short synopsis that explained that she would be a sister and that there would be bullying involved. But then when she came in, she was already very emotional about the film because she was confronted herself with bullying the year before. She kind of felt that she needed to also tell the story to the world. Of course she didn’t have a any experience at all, and she didn’t have a lot of cinematographic references, but we spent a lot of time together and I showed her Ponette, by Jacques Doillon, and also The Kid with a Bike, by the Dardenne Brothers. We watched those films together so she could get a sense where I was going to. "

by Nathaniel R This season's finalist list for the Best International Feature Film Oscar is a...

"It was very important for me to involve the children from the very beginning in the creative process. I knew from the start that I did not want them to "read" the script. We enlisted the help of an orthopedagogist, a learning coach, who came up with a method to help the children distance themselves from their characters. We worked for over two months with them.

The first step was that we asked the actors to create a puppet of their character and to talk through the puppet. So that they would understand the difference between themselves and the puppet. The second step was that we would explain the beginning of a scene and we would ask them to imagine the rest through the puppet. The third step was improvisation, so that they would involve their bodies as well. Often they would come up with lines of dialogues that were much better than what I had written and I would go back to my script and integrate their suggestions.

The last step was that we would ask them to draw each scene so that at the end of the rehearsals, they would have their own little storyboard, drawn by themselves. And so when principal photography started, they carried their own storyboard and could go back to their drawings to understand what kind of emotion they needed to project for a specific scene.

During principal photography, we would film all the time. Sometimes even when they had completely forgotten the camera was there. For instance, the sandwich scene is one of those moments that the children brought to the film."

The Belgian filmmaker discusses her immersive bullying drama.

"I want to give all my strength to your movie." I, too, would have cast this kid out of the 200 other girls.

Wandel worked with the kids for three months, alongside a specialist educator, explaining the situations of each scene and having them improvise what they thought would happen next. “It was very important for me to use their creativity,” she says. “The last step was that they would draw the scene. When we started shooting, they could look back at their own storyboard to know exactly what mental state they needed to be in for that moment.”

Playground, Laura Wandel / Belgium / 2021

#child actor #schoolfilm #femaledirector

"Imagine that we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind a door. In an instant the room we are sitting in is completely altered; everything in it has taken on another look; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them." - Carl Th. Dreyer

#Youtube

1. In Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza, 2008), the protagonist bears her guilt so singularly you...

forafricans

Seen in Ghana via Saman Archive

The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel, 2009

The work Martel does with her frames and soundscape is astonishing and inspiring.

#Argentina #lucreciamartel #femaledirector #female protagonist

Cria Cuervos opens with this piece. Later in the film, the protagonist asks a fantasized version her late mother to play it for her. We learn that it's her favorite.

#score #Youtube