Rosie & Moussa: A slice of life in Molenbeek

From Flanders Today: Every child finds their own neighbourhood beautiful. Among Belgian director Dorthée van den Berghe’s comments about making the film Rosie & Moussa, this is one that will stick with me.

Children, not having yet discovered that there are “good” and “bad” places to live, often know very little about the rest of the city they call home, and thus find their own few square blocks the norm. Indeed, superior to the norm.

The movie, which opens today, is based on the popular Rosie en Moussa four-book series for older children. It is the story of a girl, perched between childhood and adolescence, who must move to a new neighbourhood with her mum when her father mysteriously disappears from their lives. The new neighbourhood is Molenbeek.

“The idea was to show a specific neighbourhood in a big city and how children grow up in it,” says van den Berghe (My Queen Karo). “The books are set in Molenbeek, so I wanted to keep this setting but find a kind of beautiful scenery. I did a lot of workshops with children in Molenbeek, and they all see their neighbourhood as a beautiful neighbourhood.”

While most of Rosie’s world consists of her apartment building and a square, her new friend Moussa, shows her the hidden parts, where he whiles away his time daydreaming and watching the trains go by.

Hidden playgrounds

“Cities aren’t really developed with kids in mind,” says van den Berghe. “There are many places where you just can’t play, but the force of those kids is that they really create their own playgrounds in the city.”

Moussa, for instance, is particularly attracted to the roof of his building, which looks out over the whole city – an urban king of the hill. We see in one amusing scene that he’s not the only one who takes to the roof to play out a few fantasies.

“In the beginning, Rosie doesn’t like this new place; she wants to disappear, to take the red train in the animation and ride away,” says van den Bergh. “But in the end, after her adventures with Moussa, she also starts to like the neighbourhood.”

The animation to which the director refers is a technique known as risography. Google it, like I did, and you’ll see it’s a special kind of colour printer. You’ll find no references to it being used for moving images, and that’s because it’s never been done.

Judith Vanistendael, who illustrated the series of books, suggested trying to adapt the technique to film. The result is marvellous – a blast of solid colours applied directly to specific objects, such as the train. The animations are fleeting and meant to highlight how the kids feel about their surroundings at any given time.

“Where we shot the movie is very greyish, covered with concrete, and I wanted to make it more imaginative, like in the world of children,” explains van den Bergh. “It’s a process where you only have a few solid colours to work with, a bit like real paint. We tried to have this analogue feeling in the film, it’s not a digital look.”

The filmmakers developed the process themselves, “so nobody knew how – or even if – it was going to work. But I’m really happy with the results”.

Streetwise in Molenbeek

The style is also less cartoony and more arty, perfect for the 12 to 13-year-old characters in the film. They’re not quite children, not quite teenagers.

Van den Berghe spent six months in Brussels schools, particularly in Molenbeek, to find the right actor to play Moussa. In the film, he’s streetwise but friendly, eager to get to the bottom of Rosie’s preoccupation with the reason for her father’s absence. And he has to work pretty hard at it; Rosie is reserved and rather taken aback by Moussa’s direct approach to friendship. Not to mention his penchant for rapping.

So the director sat in on classes, observing the youngsters. Then she chose “about 200” of them to take part in workshops, pairing them with possible Rosies. The pair that were ultimately chosen – Savannah Vandendriessche and Imad Borji – are very much like their onscreen counterparts.

“In the beginning these two didn’t like each other,” she says. “There were combinations of kids who did really like each other, but the ones we finally chose, they had nothing in common. Imad really is streetwise and very cool, and for him, Savannah wasn’t like that at all. And Savannah speaks very proper Dutch, and she doesn’t laugh easily. They are polar opposites, which is what we found so interesting about them.”

Of course once shooting started, they became much more comfortable with each other – “just like the real Rosie and Moussa”.

Rosie & Moussa, appropriate for children aged eight and up, opens today in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent (in Dutch)