Playground

Name: Playground
Director: Laura Wandel
Genre: Drama
Released: 2021
Duration: 1 h 12 min
Cast: Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Karim Leklou, Laura Verlinden

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Drama

2021
Laura Wandel
72 mins
15

Summary

Drama starring Maya Vanderbeque and Günter Duret. Seven-year-old Nora starts her first day of school, where she sees that her older brother Abel is being bullied. Abel forbids his sister from telling any adults, but the situation soon escalates for both siblings.

IMDB

Review

A star rating of 5 out of 5.

Amber Wilkinson

A child's-eye view of bullying comes to the fore in the unremittingly tense Belgian debut of director Laura Wandel. We meet seven-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) as she fearfully hugs her dad (Karim Leklou) before embarking on her first day at school. As she starts to make friends, she realises that her older brotherAbel (Günter Duret) is being bullied. With Abel forbidding her to tell anyone, Nora faces a moral quandary - does she stand by as witness to the increasing violence, or tell an adult and risk worsening the situation and alienating her brother? By focusing tightly on Nora, Wandel expertly keys us into her anxieties and immerses us in the turbulent battlefield of the schoolyard. Wandel extensively workshopped the film with the children, and the end result has a documentary realism, as Playground focuses not on the bullying itself but its ripple effects on others, and the temptation to cruelty in order to fit in. A nerve-shredding drama, the film will haunt the nightmares of parents everywhere.

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7.3/10