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Who are today’s children? What do they think and what do they manage to grasp of the adult world? To answer these questions, the director Sophie Chiarello decides to follow the pupils of a primary class in a school immersed in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood. For five years with her camera, she lowers her gaze to child height to capture their point of view of the world. The Circle is not a documentary about children, but with children. Disarming and genuine as only they know how to be.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
IT
A depiction of the Wrangelkiez neighbourhood in Berlin. The people portrayed tell their life stories. One woman came to the neighbourhood a decade ago to work in Berlin’s still unfinished Brandenburger Airport, one man reminisces his childhood on a Tobacco farm in Kentucky, another speaks of an exceptional day in an otherwise monotonous workplace. These portraits are interwoven with the story of Elpi, a Greek woman who is waiting for the long overdue visit of an old important friend. The outcome of this mixture is a film which captures the lives and perspectives of some of Wrangelkiez’s most commanding citizens, while at the same time evoking the loss that change and time passing means for places and for people.