CHANCE

2020 | docu-fiction | 75’ | vo AR st EN, FR, NL

Unscripted and magnificently improvised, CHANCE portrays the nocturnal attempt of four young Sudanese men to cross the canal from Belgium to the UK and seek asylum there.
Filmed entirely within the trailer of a lorry, and based on the protagonists’ real life experiences, this docu-fiction is a rare, deeply human encounter with four individuals and with a reality that is too often invisible.

 

Unscripted and magnificently improvised, CHANCE portrays the nocturnal attempt of four young Sudanese men to cross the canal from Belgium to the UK and seek asylum there.
Filmed entirely within the trailer of a lorry, and based on the protagonists’ real life experiences, this docu-fiction is a rare, deeply human encounter with four individuals and with a reality that is too often invisible.

 

This film is born from an encounter with migrants in transit in Belgium, young and less young men and who flee their country and the European asylum politics and try to reach the UK. With some of these courageous individuals we developed a long-term close friendship.
Through them we learnt about the “CHANCE” - the nocturnal attempt to sneak into parking trucks along the Belgium highways, in hope that they will not be caught, that the truck won't deviate from its road, that the security check in the port will fail to detect them before arriving at their destination.
We were struck by their stories and the acute reality they revealed, which stood in great contrast to the mystified and demonized way it was depicted by politicians and the media.
We then proposed the four protagonists to make this film, that uses the CHANCE as spacial and temporal frame. But like in a real CHANCE, everything inside this frame stayed unknown. No script nor shooting breakdown was prepared. From the first “action” to the last “cut”, it was an improvisation. Improvisation was a way to assure that the protagonists would be the authors of their actions and their words.

This film is born from an encounter with migrants in transit in Belgium, young and less young men and who flee their country and the European asylum politics and try to reach the UK. With some of these courageous individuals we developed a long-term close friendship.
Through them we learnt about the “CHANCE” - the nocturnal attempt to sneak into parking trucks along the Belgium highways, in hope that they will not be caught, that the truck won't deviate from its road, that the security check in the port will fail to detect them before arriving at their destination.
We were struck by their stories and the acute reality they revealed, which stood in great contrast to the mystified and demonized way it was depicted by politicians and the media.
We then proposed the four protagonists to make this film, that uses the CHANCE as spacial and temporal frame. But like in a real CHANCE, everything inside this frame stayed unknown. No script nor shooting breakdown was prepared. From the first “action” to the last “cut”, it was an improvisation. Improvisation was a way to assure that the protagonists would be the authors of their actions and their words.

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Film's poster

Film's poster