Still: Voix Invisibles - Bart van den Aardweg

It’s lyrical, it’s dynamic and it has a distinct magical realist aesthetic, but Voix Invisibles* will be, for some, a tough watch, as it gives voice to some of the invisible folk who, as Dutch director Bart van den Aardweg puts it, took a “dark path.” 

Shot in both Belgium and The Netherlands, the film concerns alienation, and how youths can resort either to criminality or radicalisation as an outlet. One Belgium criminal tells how he held a knife to the cheek of a child whose parents were holding out on handing over a wad of cash. The knife slipped and the child became scarred for life. Other young men talk of jihad. “Why do you occupy another’s land, bomb it to rubble and then scream from the rooftops that you’re a victim of terrorism,” one beseeches the West, as a collective.

A concerned Muslim father writes to his brother that “once you cross that line, I cannot call you my brother anymore.” But an equally lyrical sequence concerns daughter Nora and Tarek, the husband that she follows to Syria, and thereafter to Paradise. We hear the final letter that Nora wrote to her mother before before Nora ultimately chose the path of ISIS.

All the time an avenging angel floats over the rooftops, either whispering a poetical commentary or invoking a radical response, depending on how the viewer decides to interpret it. The angel’s assertion that “you breathe the breath of my eternity,” may well have inspired Nora’s decision to follow in her husband’s footsteps.

“I guess this film is the result of a constant fascination I have for what I call the ‘other side,’ or the ‘wrong path,’” director van den Aardweg tells SEE NL, who was brought up in a tougher area of Amsterdam.

“I grew up in a protected, creative family myself, with all the opportunities, but when I went outside, I was always pulled to extremes or even petty crime, and boys doing heavier stuff,” he adds.

“Later, when I decided to take a creative path, first acting in small plays and later became filmmaking, I was still fascinated by how some of my friends chose the wrong way… I wanted to investigate what was the lure of it. What is this constant pull?”

Van den Aardweg is at pains to point out in his uncompromising film that when youths take the path of criminality or radicalisation, “then in the end, there's only victims.”

The film therefore offers further balance via the voice of the father, who stresses, “the greatest form of jihad is when a parent instils respect for humanity in their child.” Earlier, the father consoles a concerned youngster who talks, at the breakfast table, of suicide bombers. “You always have to listen to the ones who love you,” he says, emphasising his need and desire to protect the boy.

Van den Aardweg’s graduation film North East Hard West (2014), focussed on disaffected youth in Amsterdam West, similar to the neighbourhood he grew up in, and how a kickboxing gym offered hope, salvation and a path away from criminality.

The idea for Voix Invisibles dates back to two years after his graduation, to 2016, after the Brussels bombings were perpetrated by terrorists/criminals living in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of the city. The director decided to settle there himself, better to understand the mindset of these disaffected people with whom he felt an affinity.

“I wanted to explore the mind of somebody on the so-called wrong path further and deeper, and to create an interior monologue, to connect their thoughts to the physical shape I had used before. And I knew that I had to live amongst my characters to catch the real story, make them talk to me.”

“When the attacks happened in Brussels, something else occurred to me, that there's a bigger darkness hidden behind stone walls and the people struggling. And that there's almost like two worlds, and you're either on one side or the other.”

Van den Aardweg underlines the broad scope of his film. “There are other countries where you could make the same story but without the Islamic part. it's a universal anger.”

Nevertheless, with the world in crisis, the film does have particular resonance right now. “The division between East and West is also happening already for a long time. This is just the modern version of it.”

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Voix Invisibles is produced by New Ams Film Company.

Find out more about Movies that Matter here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund