GRANDS TRAVAUX

GRANDS TRAVAUX is set at the Anneessens-Funck Institute, a Dutch-speaking vocational school in the centre of Brussels where young people learn a trade. The film documents and portrays what shapes their lives: practical exercises and lessons at school, football, their romantic entanglements, and the search for a home and work. By depicting everyday life within the school walls, GRANDS TRAVAUX also paints a picture of contemporary Brussels, with its young people as the starting point.

“You could view GRANDS TRAVAUX as an attempt to map out the Anneessens-Funck vocational school. We map out all the different spaces of a place where Brussels’ fragmentation converges. Just as with BECAUSE WE ARE VISUAL and RAIN, the structure of GRANDS TRAVAUX is strongly linked to a tension between inside and outside, between private and public space, between dark and light … Essentially, Grands travaux is about how we can create new spaces in film. The film is a fluid geography, a movement through the multifaceted living spaces of young people,” says filmmaker Gerard-Jan Claes.