Playground

Do you remember your first moments at primary school? In Laura Wandel’s striking debut film, we’re with 7-year-old Nora right through her own jolting first adjustments to a particularly unsupervised playground. The film’s original title, Un monde, is the best indicator of what to expect: camera at a low eye height, a whirling panoply of sounds, injustice seemingly in every corner. Nora’s all-seeing protector Dad has left her at the gate, and in place of adult rules, there’s new alliances with friends, however temporary. A wild, immersive ride and a clear parable of moral law.

‘I wanted to explore the school setting as a mirror of our society. I saw enormous potential in this environment for creating a fictional narrative, and specifically a story of siblings, struggling with the challenges of adjusting to this unfamiliar world. In my view, the best way to tell the story was to do it from the children’s perspective. When I’m in the writing phase, I spend a lot of time observing the location, to soak up the atmosphere and draw my fiction from this. In terms of my work with the actors, I try to come up with an approach that suits the people I have in front of me. For Playground, we worked with children’s coaches to develop a method that would allow them to understand and internalise their characters’ emotional journey, without ever giving them access to the screenplay. Filming with children is quite an adventure.’

Laura Wandel, Director