Int’l Critics Line: Belgium’s Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Playground’

deadline.com:

Belgium’s Oscar-shortlisted International Feature is an intimate child’s-eye view of bullying from debut writer-director Laura Wandel.

Playground is known as Un Monde in its native French language, and this is set in a world of its own: the school that two siblings must navigate to get through the day.We meet 7-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) and her older brother Abel (Günter Duret) when they are dropped off at the school gates by their father (Karim Leklou).

Nervous Nora just wants to hang out with Abel, but he’s busy trying to impress children his own age. “I’m beating up the new kids with Antoine,” he says, setting the stage for a drama that’s dominated by peer pressure, shifting loyalties and violence — some of which could be life-threatening, even if the perpetrators may not realize it.These may be children, but their problems feel as urgent as any thriller, and adult-world parallels are easy to make. “We live in a fast-paced society where there is no time to deal with the root causes of problems,” Wandel has said, and the same applies to the world of Nora, whom she follows intently.

The teachers and supervisors are stretched, unable to deal with the volume of upsets and scraps, so when Nora runs to them to tell them that Abel is being bullied, they often get there too late.