Zonder Meer / Directed by Meltse Van Coillie

ZONDER MEER

DIRECTED BY MELTSE VAN COILLIE
BELGIUM // 2020
14 MINS
A campsite in the summer holidays, aimless days spent in the shade. Sunlight is glittering on the lake, but nobody is allowed to swim here. A boy has disappeared and may have drowned. Little Lucie is trying to understand what is going on around her.

**Brief Encounters Jury comments:**

Languid, intentioned, and evocative, this film skilfully constructs a world of childlike curiosity, of innocence, of playful wonder and through her subtle, uncompromising aesthetic, gently allows all the elements of this world to simmer in an underlying and faceless violence.
This year’s Brief Encounters Grand Prix goes to Zonder Meer by Meltse Van Coillie.

Reflective Encounters

“Through its square frame, Zonder Meer invites us to delve deep in a world of sensations, where the underwater sounds immediately place us in a summer-y mood. But despite this soft bucolic atmosphere, but from the very beginning we can sense that something deeper is hiding. A phantomatic presence inhabits the frame and our minds, especially through the prism of the off-screen, where the serious talks of the adults merge with the gentle hum of the countryside.

By choosing to focus on the presence of Lucie, a five-year-old child, as the central character, Meltse Van Coillie offers us the position of an omniscient viewer, catching the moments of life the young girl slowly encounters. As if the world of children and adults were separated by a barely visible barrier, sound and image remain two distinct spaces. Little by little, this opposition of two universes becomes visible inside the frame itself, as in the soft and beautiful central scene where the window of a caravan divides the frame in two, separating the fixed and silent waiting of the children from the more worrisome spaces of the adults. Beyond the story, the film – at the border of documentary – also questions the relationship to time and its dilation. Between the world of the youngest and the one of the oldest, the wait is not perceived with the same floating feeling in the heart of these summer nights and days..”