Titel: Daniel fait face | Daniel
About the movie
The film is set in a French school. Daniel is 10 years old and likes to hang out with his friends in school. When Marthe stands at the blackboard and recites something, Daniel’s gaze gets caught for a moment. Shortly before the end of class, the teacher informs the children that a terror exercise is about to take place. They should then all behave calmly and apply what they have learned. The children take this very calmly, sometimes simply talking to each other. Then the bell rings for the break and everyone storms out into the schoolyard. It is winter and the yard is covered with a thin layer of snow. Some children play after a wedding, others catch the snowflakes that slowly glide from the sky. Daniel and his boys try to get more information about the planned exercise during this break. They climb into the school building at a hidden place to get to the headmaster’s office. While the boys are listening in front of the office, he stands outside and keeps awake until he gets a nosebleed. Then he gives up his position and goes to a lady of the school (school doctor?) who takes care of him a little.
When the nosebleed has stopped, he strolls back to school across the now completely empty courtyard. There is absolute silence and the music seems threatening, even as he wanders through the empty rooms of the school. When he is wandering around in the sports hall, he hears noises from the changing room. Curious, he peers through the crack of a door and sees Marthe, who is about to get ready for a shower. When it goes into the shower and disappears from his field of vision, he sneaks further into the changing room to linger there. But his attempt to observe quietly fails when he makes a quiet noise, which Marthe has heard. She discovers him crouching and sitting behind a partition full of remorse. Wordlessly Marthe reaches for a long white dress, quickly puts it on and leaves the locker room. We find ourselves in a theatre rehearsal, the children are rehearsing a dance choreography that Marthe also attends. While the teacher is training the children, Daniel appears there with his gaze lowered. He also belongs to the theatre group, but today it is visibly difficult for him to integrate into the group. In a short break you see Marthe talking to other classmates and the glances change into horror. Now the others also know what Daniel has done and immediately start to serve him the receipt for his actions. Then the rehearsal alarm begins, about which the children were informed…
Conclusion:
The film is very artistic and mixes the first passion, the play with fire and the omnipresent terror, which has shaken France several times. Many moments in the film are very quiet or slow, but also convey an extremely threatening mood through the musical background. The performance of the young actors is enormous, especially in the scenes with the rehearsal, but whether the performance meets everyone’s taste is written on a different paper. As the movie also has a certain focus on the terror exercises because of the attacks in France besides the quite playful relationship between Daniel and Marthe, one should perhaps bring this knowledge a little bit closer to the younger viewers before going to the cinema, as the motives about the corresponding plot around the terror exercise are only scratched quite superficially and/or you have to pay very close attention to the correspondingly rare information. Children from France should surely understand this much better than in this country. The running time of this film surprised me. The almost 60 minutes flew by.
Actors:
Théo Polgár (Daniel)
Madeleine Follacci (Marthe)
Tristan Bernard (Colin)
Aurélia Gabrielli (Aurélia)
Emmanuelle Cuau (teacher)
Director:
Marine Atlan
Information about the film incl. short film excerpt:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/programm/berlinale_programm/datenblatt.html?film_id=201910771
Pictures from the Q&A:
Unfortunately there are no pictures, because none of the film team was present for the presentation.
