Easy Lessons

Intégration Inch'Allah

October 2016 •Dutch

They have just arrived in Brussels. Newly arrived immigrants from Syria, Irak, Morocco... that will have to follow a mandatory integration course in Flanders, called « inburgering ».

Vous serez parés pour le vent

April 2022 •French

In Saint Pierre et Miquelon, a tiny French archipelago in the North Atlantic, a group of teenagers have just graduated from high school. Urged to continue their studies, it's time to leave for mainland France and Canada. Manon, Evie, Enguerrand and their friends are about to spend their last summer on the islands together. In the turmoil that precedes this leap into the void, these budding adults, like previous generations, are confronted with this particular moment in their lives. They'll have to leave. But they are islanders, and this departure has the air of exile, of uprooting with no certainty of return. As they leave adolescence, they will be uprooted from their land, crossing a border that is both symbolic and physical. The idea is that something happens here that is more observable than elsewhere, something that concentrates and accelerates the transformations of the teenagers' personalities.

Bodysong

December 2003 •English

Documentary footage from various sources, set to music. Showing the whole of human life, from birth to death and beyond.

Girl Culture

Invalid date •French

Refugee Poetry

April 2016 •Kurdish

The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.

Porta d’Europa

December 2023 •English

A migrant boat has been stranded in the Mediterranean Sea for 30 hours. As authorities ignore calls for help, the Sea-Watch Crew, an NGO, launches an urgent search.

Convivencia

April 2021 •Spanish

Les Autres Chemins

September 2021 •French

Narcotics, Why Not?

January 1966 •English

This film presents a series of extemporaneous interviews with teenagers and young adults who have taken narcotics for "kicks," "association," or "curiosity." Residents of the California Rehabilitation Center relate how they were introduced to narcotics, why they wished they had not used drugs or narcotics, and what the future holds for them. Film is shot in Hollywood, Calif.

L'Odyssée des enfants d'ULIS

January 2024 •French

Tender

January 2020 •French

Late summer, a small lake, teenage rascals. Mia, 11 and too wise for her age, asks Hugo, 15 and blasé, to tell her about Chaïnes – a girl he spent evenings with at the lake, trying to seduce her. He felt the fear of declaring his love and the torment provoked by the exuberant but secretive Chaïnes, who never shows her emotions. Mia and her siblings surround them, like a choir. A slow, dark, documentary in which time doesn't seem to exist.

From Abdul To Leila

January 2024 •French

After losing part of her memory in an accident, Leila, a young French woman of Iraqi origin, reconstructs her story by reconnecting with her family and exploring her roots. Through music and cinema, she brings her exiled father's poems to lite, dis-covers the reality of the Middle East, and embarks on a personal quest to understand her identity and find her voice.

Hide and Seek

January 1996 •English

Mixes documentary interviews of memories of lesbian adolescence with the story of the 12-year-old girl Lou discovering her sexuality in 1960s America.

Borderless

May 2019 •English

Lauren Southern investigates what is really happening at Europe’s borders. From interviews with human traffickers in Morocco to secret recordings of illegal NGO activity in Greece, Borderless will blow the European Border Crisis wide open.

Bachar à la ZAD

June 2020 •French

Come On Children

March 1973 •English

Five boys and five girls ages 13 to 19 live on a farm for ten weeks, to be filmed, and to see what might emerge for each of them personally.

Bloom

October 2022 •English

Three groups of adolescent girl friends from Quebec are going through tough changes. The process of inventing their own bodies and identity are being recorded on the move by their smartphones and shared with their peers from other parts of the networked world. Due to their strong need of external confirmation, they alter their lives into a series of retouched pictures and videos. The film camera, however, captures their feelings of void, loneliness and deep inner insecurities that are not so attractive for Periscope, TikTok or Instagram. An intimate portrait of adolescence is made with full comprehension of experiencing and self-presentation in a generation growing up on the brink of the real and virtual worlds.

Kitten of vluchteling?

September 2023 •Dutch

Bangla Surf Girls

April 2021 •Bengali

Three working-class teenage girls in a port city in Bangladesh escape daily hardships and stifling family lives by riding waves on their surfboards and grabbing hold of the fleeting and thrilling sense of freedom that brings.

L'écho de la révolte - Les émeutes 10 ans après

January 2015 •French

On October 27, 2005, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré died in an electrical substation while fleeing the police, sparking three weeks of riots across France. A decade later, as the officers involved are acquitted, the film revisits the voices of those who lived through the uprising. Through their stories, it explores what remains of that anger and how their view of society has evolved.