Kumail Syed

In her film 1000 Girls, A Place We Go, Sietske Van Aerde leads viewers through a series of playful transformations. Inspired by the nymphs of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who are constantly shifting shape due to the cruelties inflicted upon them by the gods, the film follows several individuals searching for ways to exist in a world that can often feel heavy. Van Aerde films her own surroundings, capturing friends, artists, and other passers-by as they speak about themselves. We witness a variety of internal portraits unfolding.

A sick child spends its numbered days confined to bed, waiting for Death to come. Silence slowly fills its room. The curtains veil the nights in blue. As Death moves closer, a series of strangely familiar visitors pass by. We are taken on a fantastical journey through a child’s dying dreams. A fairy tale unfolds.

After reading Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims, in which the author returns to the working-class village of his childhood, Kumail Syed realised that his life was shaped through a very different experience of class than those around him. Up until that point the filmmaker had denied his background. When he realised that his rejection was an insult to the reality that his parents had experienced, he decided to revisit the neighbourhood of his childhood. Les enfants ont des oreilles bears witness to Syed’s class of origin through the form of a filmed diary. It shows what the working class can represent today through tableaux vivants from the neighbourhood, as well as through the testimonies of the director and his mother, and the people he encountered during his return.

Set in the intimacy of the "old little house" in the working-class neighborhood of Brussels, les Marolles, Rue Haute 116/118 captures the relationship between people and their surrounding space, how these two elements interact and ultimately shape each other.