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This is really a very remarkable film. Exploring the group dynamics of school children, director Laura Wandel has taken the radical choice of positioning her camera at children's height, registering only what children see. Adults are reduced to supporting roles, and they are only visible when they occupy themselves directly with Nora, the heroine of Un Monde, played amazingly by 9 year old Maya Vanderbeque.

Not only the way Wandel shows us what children see makes this film special. The script is also very clever in explaining how the mechanics of bullying can really make young children desperate, and how it is almost impossible to find a solution using adult logic. It is almost a cliché to say that children can be very cruel, but this film shows why and how it happens.

The almost documentary filming style, with lots of close-ups, is impressive. In one crucial scene, the camera focuses for several mintues on Nora's face, while she registers what's going on around her. The viewer hears what she hears, but sees only her face. The result is spectacular.

This film can easily stand next to the other great documentary-style film about school life, 'Entre les murs'. That film was nominated for an Oscar. 'Un Monde' is the Belgian entry for the Oscar race. It deserves at least a nomination.

This movie is everything it have to be. The camerawork is really brilliant , the hand held camera gives uncomfortable feel throughout the movie. The performances by siblings is just brilliant throughout the movie they carry the burden of movie. The story is really very simple but detailed. Every moment seem to be important and not a repetition. And thus movie is very quick but slow it gives time to viewers to get to understand what's going on. To quickly summarise this movie is a must watch, thought provoking and not easy to forget.

Bullying has become a big subject in the last 20 years, but this film tells a great story from the perspective of two children who are each victims of it. With the Dardenne brothers and others, the Belgians have redefined the social landscape of Italian neorealism.

A mundane subject given extra ordinary detailing and presented from a unique angle, slates story line impressive and compelling.

Given the nature of content, story is of a serious nature and the kids have done exceptionally well to portray the roles to perfection.

I've never seen anything quite like this film before. It is so truthful it could easily pass for a documentary about the life of young schoolchildren. But it is also as skilful a piece of storytelling as any mainsteam movie. Above all, it contains within it an unspoken but ever-present warning that , unless we're careful, we can end up fighting playground battles all our lives.

Um pø that is, a film angling the subjective feeling of sociodynamical motions and emotions in a smallschool environment, where we follow ''little'' Nora and her older brother, a boy thats being ultimately seriously bad bullied by senior school mates. We are experiencing the intricate connections between teacxhervs pupil, pupil vs parent and pupil vs pupil and contra versa. It gives you a strange feeling of''have i felt these feelings before''?

I, myself many many years ago, did not have trouble in my own class but where bullied alot by 6th graders due to speaking the wrong dialect at school,i also did not have any of my brothers in the schoolyard to protect me.therefore i slung on the sleeves of the guardian teachers for at least 2 years, and had that eartshattering moment when my headteacher took another job, i cried and cried for days that summer holiday. When returning to school in the fall though i had gained alot more strength and physique due to loads of swimming sessions, coached by my uncle, that made me more sturdy mentally and quite a match for those trying to push me over, so when i marked my spot as mine with shear muscle use i had most of the time a nice life in the small and middle school age, so i survived.

So i fell into reminiscence when viewing these kids. And the kids acting is just phenomenal, nora is top, and leads you through everything with might. I must admit that i had totally forgotten how noisy the schoolyard was way back then.

Productionwise i have only one small flaw noted, and that leads to more admiration to the children acting, because the ever and forever close facial shooting angles mustve been a pest for them small ones.i can agree the share of focus, but not as much as here where you almost feel and taste the smell of sweat and tears.so a little less blurred out backgrounds next time. A recommend to all teachers and parents that has a gutfeeling that everything isnt allright, from the grumpy old man.

A fine movie showing at the London Film festival. In the Belgium hard-htting tradition of the Dardenne's, with a hint of the great Alan Clarke's minimal shooting style. SHort and brutally honest. The director has an interesting voice...

An interesting movie about the complexity of the world how children experience it. I loved the camera's point of view, constantly on the height of the children.

Let me start by admiring the performance of the child actors in this film. It's a dark and uncomfortable world they portray, and they make you emerge in it, and have you struggling to come back to the surface and not feel suffocated, which, I suppose, is the film's purpose. The children make it feel very real. Amazing.

This is not a movie for a jolly night out. It's rough and tough. It is however, a portrayal of what the world can be/feel like for kids. This film shows that there are many kinds of bullying, some physical and aggressive, some psychological and, perhaps, in a way unintended. It shows the impact it has on the life of children. Most of all it shows there is hardly a way out, least of all an easy one, despite well-meaning adults.

Adding to the story's unease is the weird camera work. Most of the time it's close-ups of little Nora, with the people she's interacting with sometimes in an intimate co-close-up, and sometimes only half in view, or speaking from a blurred background. Only occasionally, there is a wider shot, either to set a scene or to show something Nora's watching. This really pulls you in and grabs you by the throat.

All in all, an intriguing but very uneasy watch!

Bullying is such a tricky difficult issue to solve especially among kids. It's complicated not only because it's hard to discover if some kid is objected and suffers from it among his collogues but also because the subjected can easily transform into the new bully as an act of respond by transforming the anger into violence, and that is what PLAYGROUND portrayed effectively and painfully here.

This is a gritty story about the sociology of a school playground. It's also an account of love. Do you remember your school playground? How did we get out alive?

Yes, forget Nicolas Philibert's ETRE ET AVOIR, made in 2002, a documentary about young eight or ten years old kids in school, and the moving relationship with their teacher. This one is not a documentary, it's a real movie but actually made more or less in a documentary style, but beware. It is painful, disturbing to watch, because about bullying, psychological and physical harassment, torture, pulled by children towards other children. It is awful, disgusting, especially because of the contrast between the tenderness of some scenes and others absolutely unbearable, such as this one, when we see some kids putting the face of one of their class mates in a toilet bidet. I saw such sequences in war films and Gestapo torture sessions. It is a film about cruelty, the most gruesome cruelty, because without any reason. It is very hard to watch for those who lived such things or for those who have kids who commited suicide, thanks to their school mates torturers, class mates hangmen, exectioners. Shame on them and thanks to this beautiful and unavoidable little film which offers the peculiarity to have no music at all.

Two things struck me immediately about Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel's powerful 2021 film. On a (slightly) negative note, I think whoever it was who came up with the English translation of the Belgian-French title ('Un monde') of the film really missed a trick - 'The Playground' might be 'literally' correct (in terms of the film's recurring setting) but 'the world' would be a much more accurate description of the (scale of the) impact Wandel's circumstances are having on Maya Vanderbeque's school newbie, Nora. On a more positive note, Wandel's visual focus here (courtesy of Frédéric Noirhomme's camera), namely a seemingly continuous close-up on Nora's face regardless of where 'the action' is is a quite brilliant (if not entirely original) construct, giving us an uncompromisingly intimate (and devastatingly moving) take on her world view. Of course, the other big positive here are the performances of Vanderbeque and Gunter Duret as Nora's brother, Abel - both inexperienced newbies delivering quite amazing turns.

As we see Nora struggling to come to terms with her new life - being isolated, made fun of and causing Abel grief as his younger sister - the other slight (maybe superficial) negative here is the 'one-track' nature of Wandel's focus (even if this is rarely less than compelling). Looking more closely, however, and we see other (aside from Nora's dilemma) wider issues at play - single parenting (and fathers taking responsibility), the difficulty for teachers in dealing with bullying, the likely impact that bullying has on academic progress and, perhaps most significantly, the issue of whether to 'turn a blind eye' when witnessing an obvious injustice in society ('grassing', if you like). Certainly, as a portrait of Wandel's 'central subject' (school bullying) it is difficult to imagine a more convincing portrayal.

In terms of comparator films, being Belgian(!) the Dardennes brothers spring most readily to mind, particularly (in terms of 'childhood portraits') Rosetta and The Son, whilst Ken Loach's masterpiece Kes also considers similar issues. Regardless, Wandel's debut film has much to commend it.

I think this is our first Belgian film - in fact it even might be our first Belgian anything! I know this exists but that's as far as it goes for me - I'm assuming at least some of it is set in a playground.

Yup - a playground is definitely involved. We basically follow Nora around as she starts school - unsure at first, but slowly gaining confidence and friends as she finds her feet. Unfortunately, her older brother Abel isn't having a great time of it with bullies and Nora's sense of injustice is fired up. But her best efforts to fix things, unsurprisingly, don't have the desired effect. It's all far too believable and at times you do despair, but it does manage to come up with a good ending which doesn't tie things up nicely but does offer some hope.

The film REALLY focuses on Nora so it's going to live or die on Maya Vanderbeque's performance and, as The Guardian says, she is indeed brilliant in this - it would be an impressive performance at any age and she absolutely nails it. Günter Duret is also good as Abel (her brother) in a pretty unflattering role, with him and Maya displaying many aspects of a sibling relationship well. Also worth of a mention are Karim Leklou as her dad (who Wikipedia tells me is named Finnegan for no obvious reason) and Laura Verlinden as Mme Agnes (her teacher) who portray different aspects of adult helplessness - but my major take away was that her dad really should have taught her to tie her laces before she went to school!

The film captures the randomness and unfairness of bullying accurately and the (sometimes unintentional) cruelty of children, but also the innocence and joy of play. It's also absolutely heartbreaking at times - from the perspective of the children, the parents and the teachers because there's obviously no easy answer to these things. And, as The Guardian says, it is indeed a short, intense film - 72 minutes!

The film's direction (Laura Wandel, with her debut) is well thought out with most of the film taking place at Nora's level which is very effective (we either only see the waistline of adults or they have to bend down to join the shot) and the use of sound is also impressive with random school noises contrasting well with some very effective silence or whispers. It's also interesting that French title is "a world" because it really gives you impression that school is Nora's world.

I really liked this film - it's well put together and really pulls at your emotions with a stunning central performance (and there's no absolutely no danger of it outstaying its welcome). So it's a strong recommendation from me - at time of writing it's available to rent in all the usual places.