Playground

Nora (Maya Vanderbeque), an anxious 7-year-old, must return to school despite her distress and longing to stay with her dad (Karim Leklou). Despite Nora’s age, she soon becomes responsible for her older brother, Abel (Günter Duret), who is being tormented by the other kids. This puts Nora in a quandary – should she tell the adults or remain silent out of solidarity with her brother? Once Nora discovers Abel soaking wet, she feels compelled to take action, but just makes things worse. The authorities at school generally turn a blind eye, and her father remains powerless, kept at a distance from the confines of the school. An eventual confrontation between Nora and Abel leads to a startling climax.

72 min/Belgium/French with English subtitles/2021/Cert 15

World Premiere and Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize – Un Certain regard – Cannes Film Festival 2021

Winner of the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature London Film Festival 2021

Previews: BFI London Film Festival 11 & 12 October
French Film Festival, 12 Nov, Filmhouse Edinburgh, Leeds Film Festibal, 12,14,16 Nov Vue Light Leeds, 15 Nov, GFT Glasgow, Belmont Playhouse, 16 Nov, Cambridge Film Festival, Arts Picturehouse 23,25 Nov

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Laura Wandel was born in 1984 in Belgium where she studied filmmaking at the IAD school. Her school film, Murs, was selected for many festivals around the world. After her first short film, O Négatif , she directed Les Corps Étrangers, selected in competition at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Playground (Un Monde) is her first feature.

Filmography

2021 Playground (Un Monde) – Cannes, Un Certain Regard
2014 Foreign Bodies – Cannes Short Film Competition
2011 O’Négatif (short)
2007 Murs

100% Rotten Tomatoes

★★★★
"Playground begins by stealing your heart. A little girl, Nora (Maya Vanderbeque), looks back at her father (Karim Leklou), eyes brimming, as she is led away to her first day at primary school. The film grabs a tight hold and doesn't relinquish your emotions for one second of its running time...it is as small and perfectly formed as its heroine...In it's own way the film is an epic.
A beautiful film."
Tom Shone, The Sunday Times

★★★★★
"It's a brilliant and gruelling watch for everyone who ever felt they didn't fit in at school themselves, and it will doubtless resonate with parents of school-age children and teachers with experience of bullying."
Saskia Baron The Arts Desk

★★★★
"What an incredible performance from Vanderbeque" an intuition of fear and pain and moral outrage that goes beyond acting."
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

★★★★★
"Laura Wandel captures this universal ordeal with a masterful sense of perspective and empathy." 
Christopher Machell CineVue

★★★★
"Just think: a mere 72 minutes in the life of a primary schooler is "officially" more scarring than any given 2.5 hours of Marvel carnage. Wandel should take that as the compliment it is. Its brilliance lies in its perspective."
Robbie Collins, The Telegraph

★★★★
"Powerful depiction of school bullying. The performances that Wandel coaxes out of her young cast are remarkable and often painful to behold"
Tara Brady, The Irish Times

★★★★★
"An exceptional debut feature...after all the drama and trauma Wandel delivers an ending indelibly touched by grace."
Tom Dawson, Total Film magazine

★★★★★
"It's Wandel's debut feature, and it feels like shes been preparing for it her whole life. From the start it feels like a beautifully shot documentary, and some of it kind of is."
"This is tender, sensitive, non-judgemental work, which doesn't put a foot wrong. At 72 minutes, it verges on slight - theres certainly no fat on it.  Yet still, it's an emotional barrage that will bring out your most primal protective urges.'
An exceptionally taut drama."
Alex Godfrey, EMPIRE magazine

★★★★
"Sometimes cinema is at it most potent and engrossing when it is stripped down to the essentials, Playground, the accomplished, uncomfortably powerful first feature from the Belgian-writer-director Laura Wandel, is a lean 72 minutes, with no score and a lithe, instinctive handheld camera that rately leaves the face of seven-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbveque, superb).
It's a remarkable achievement."
Wendy Ide, The Observer

★★★★
"Playground is commendable in treating break-time brahahas like the far-reaching, formative conflicts they really are."
Ryan Gilbey, The New Statesman

★★★★★
"An unflinchingly honest, heartbreaking and gorgeouly acted tale of schoolyard-bullying."
Linda Marric, The Jewish Cronicle

10/10
"It might be the hardest thing to pull off in cinema: compelling, unsentimental films that convey the realities of childhoold.  But Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel manages it magnificiently...Stylistically close to Belgium's great realist masters the Dardennes, Playground takes the insights and pushes them somewhere new.  It's an intensely involving film, and simply one of the best - and truest - ever made about childhood."
Jonathan Romney, Uncut magazine

"We like to think of our children swaddled in the bubble wrap of parental protection, but the playground can be a jungle, a hotbed of feral resent.  This theme is powerfully explored in Laura Wandel's Belgian drama Playground."
Paul Whitington, The Irish Independent

Why 'Playground' might be the greatest film ever made about childhood'
"What is the greatest film ever made about chldhood? Fans of the French New Wave will argue Francois Truffaut's debut The 400 Blows. Pixar enthuiasts will vouch for the Toy Story series. Or if American independent cinema is your thing, then you'll probably plump for Boyhood, Richard Linklater's remarkable fim...Yet there's never been a film quite like Playground...
Read James Mottram interview with Laura Wandel in the ipaper - and more interviews below:

Interviews with Laura Wandel in The Guardian, Sight & Sound, Little White Lies, Curzon Journal, iNews, Dazed magazine

“A gut-punch of a film that is not so much a portrait of schoolyard bullying as it is a sensory immersion straight into the heart of children abusing other children physically and emotionally, Playground is a sit-up-and-take-notice blend of outstandingly natural performances enhanced by spot-on cinematic choices. Tough  subject matter sensitively handled...Laura Wandel is a talent to watch”
Lisa Nesselson, Screen International

"A gripping psychological drama..Vanderbeque's performance is transfixing."
Jessica Kiang, Variety

“…the absolute highlight of the section, and one of the outstanding films of the festival (Cannes 2021) overall, was Playground, by Belgian first-time director Laura Wandel.”
Jonathan Romney, Sight & Sound

★★★★1/2
School bullying remains, sadly a universal theme, with filmmakers across the world tackling it.  This consideration of it from Belgian first-time feature director Laura Wandel finds something new to say by working the angles, both hunkering down to a child's pint-size perspective and shifting the emphasis by taking the viewpoint not of the child who is the inital victim of bullying but his kid sister instead."
Amber Wilkinson,,Eye for Film

★★★★
“A brilliant debut feature.  Playground’s brilliance is in its simplicity and intimacy…The two young stars are fantastic, and their performances are highlighted by cleverly thought-out photography that keeps them centred at all times and draws you in to the excitement and terror of their little world."
Danielle Measor, WeTalkFilm

"In this stunning Belgian drama, a little girl and her brother go to school, read, write, fight and learn some brutal lessons about life.

In a perfect hour and 12 minutes, “Playground” tells the sweeping, intimate story of a child’s coming into consciousness…This is the first feature from the writer-director Laura Wandel, and it’s a knockout, as flawlessly constructed as it is harrowing.

A work of striking integrity and force, “Playground” owes a debt to the influential Belgian filmmaker brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, both in its formal and thematic concerns. As in their movies, Wandel is charting a moral awakening and focusing on the questions that many movies rarely engage. How do we love, and why? How do we become, who do we become? Wandel is telling the story of one child, a tiny planet spinning in a mysterious, often confusing, unsettled universe. (The original title is “Un Monde.”) But she’s also telling a story that in its piercing, sensitive detail and life-shaping arc is as familiar as yours and mine."

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

"Vanderbeque gives what may be the most fully formed child performance in recent memory. Confronted by a camera that gives her no room to hide, her eyes register mercurial fluctuations of feeling, pivoting from intense fear to growing confidence, from paralyzing shock to bitter disillusionment, as Nora gradually realises what she and her brother are up against.

No one in this movie has a complete understanding of what's going on, but Wandel proves that a sensitive enough camera can provide a fuller picture than most.  The final shot of "Playground" bravely answers that question, with a tenderness that refuses the easy comforts of either sentimentality or cheap cynicism.  Nora and Abel, the movie insists, are not as alone as they think.  Maybe none of us are."
Justin Chang, LA Times


"Through the teary eyes of a child, fighting against her first day of school, writer/director Laura Wandel introduces us into the microcosm of her heart-rendering debut "Playground," Belgium's shortlisted Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film."

While both Duret and Vanderbeque's acting is - without fear of hyperbole - miraculous, the latter's presences on screen speaks of an innate sensitivity for externalizing a person's inner complications. How Wandel manages to encourage and shape such a turn must be sheer alchemy."
Carlos Aguilar, Roger.Ebert.com


'Wandel employs a verite style sans musical score, inherited largely from fellow Belgians Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whom she cites as an influence...Thanks to the camerawork, impressive sound design, and knockout performance from Vanderbeque, we experience every emotion Nora feels."
Susannah Gruder, IndieWire

“An unvarnished contemplation of the cruelty of children and the negligence of adults. Playground is practically an exercise in the use of off-camera space, and a masterful and refreshingly consistent one at that.”
Diego Semerene, Slant Magazine

“…the film's originality stems from its creative use of mix-and-match, taking a schoolyard tale and treating it with the same hard-nosed intensity as Audiard's prison thriller and a here-and-now visual immediacy more common to a war film.”
Ben Croll, The Wrap

"Belgium director Laura Wandel's jarring debut feature plunges headlong into the world of school-aged children and observes their dynamics with chilling precision.  It generously studies its subjects...and extracts haunting conclusions about the Darwinian nature of ostensibly idyllic settings.'
Lovia Gvarkye, The Hollywood Reporter

"Wandel's film burrows right into the mind of its characters, leaving you gasping for air."
Ben Flanagan, In Review Online

"Playground is a poignant portrait of the dynamics of fitting in and finding one's place."
Selina Sondermann, The Upcoming

“Filmed from a child’s perspective, Laura Wandel’s first feature is a moving, subtle yet incisive tale which impresses for its intense depiction of bullying at school.”
Fabien Lemercier, Cineuropa

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