L’Intérêt d’Adam

A child suffering from malnutrition is hospitalized. Head nurse Lucy allows his mother to stay by his side outside of the legally imposed hours. Lucy puts the well-being of young Adam first in a system guided by rules meant for the bigger picture, missing empathy and an eye for specific situations. Lucy chooses to listen to the fate of Adam’s young mother, Rebecca, even though she finds herself in an overburdened healthcare system, bend under the enormous workload.

The Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel returns, after her debut UN MONDE – focusing on the world of children with a school’s playground as its arena – to a closed off world with its own laws: a hospital. Also in her second film, Wandel chooses to follow her lifelike characters with a personal handeld camera, and delivers a portrait that crawls deep under your skin.

The work of Wandel shows similarities with the humanistic cinema of the brother Dardenne, who also produced her second film. But she clearly adds her own voice: her belief in cinema as a leading force for societal change. “Of course, there’s partly criticism in my film, because I show that the system has ceased working, for the hospital as well as child support. The lack of resources is striking on both sides and I think there’s an urgency to bring to light these shortcomings. My vision is subjective, certainly, but it starts from a genuine, concrete reality. I’m here to ask questions, not to answer them. So rather to speak of a political film, a word I’m very careful with, I rather say it’s a cry of alarm and maybe the start of a dialogue? I believe cinema can bring about change… What is the purpose otherwise?”

We screen the film in collaboration with KASKA-DKO, UAntwerp in the Semaine de la langue française et de la Francophonie.