Fien Troch

While children only appear on the periphery of Fien Troch's previous features, Someone Else's Happiness and Unspoken, they play an essential narrative role in each film. 'The children were mirrors for my main characters, or they represented the still clean, naive world that the adults had lost,' she explains. 'All of my stories became the stories they are because of the involvement of children. So I decided, if these children are so important, why don't I try to make a film in which they are the main characters?' The result is Kid (pictured still on the right). Set in rural Flanders, it tells the story of a seven-year-old boy struggling to replace the lost love of his mother.

Text Ian Mundell    

The story Troch chose this time explores the way in which children deal with emotional trauma. 'I wanted to convey how children are still flexible in the way they get bad news, that they can survive it just because they are kids, they can play and so on, and how long it is before that play doesn't work any more.'

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