An Angel in Doel: Berlin-review

Patient, balanced documentary portrait of persistent senior citizens and their neighborhood quickly disappear.

Tom Fassaert

BERLIN - the shadow of mortality hangs heavy over the Belgian Dutch documentary an Angel in Doel. In fact, the time that is past, one of the most important participants of already six feet is under. Obliquely hinting broader political and social issues, that by focusing on a doomed doomed village and its last inhabitants, this is a quiet accomplished feature length debut of Tom Fassaert, expand after graduating film school, short Doel lives. Festivals and TV channels, specializing in non-fiction fare should check out this poetic essays of black and white-although hardly a lack of documentation of plucky, red tape fight right now there are senior citizens.

75-Year old widow Emilienne for a particularly tough and elastic heroine makes even by the standards of the mini-genre. It is very strong at the Township of Doel, only along the river of the mega-port of Antwerp in the Flemish attached half of Belgium. It is an area that is "As part of the port expansion plans will be sacrificed". (Doel's fate is also more briefly in Noel Burch checks and Allan Sekula'srounds globe-hopping documentary the forgotten space, currently doing the Festival.)

Families and young people departed quickly, but a small number of older people are not so happy, soft "progress." These include Emilienne, her two best friends and the local priest Verstraete. In the first half of an Angel in Doel (de Engel van Doel) Verstraete focuses as well on Emilienne and the aged, sickly, until his sudden, though hardly unexpected. If Emilienne of Mr away move grannies, "all alone" remains with only your cats (and the documentary team) for companies, maintaining a low level war of attrition with the (invisible) local authorities who are keen for those who leave progressive bulldozers Doel.

Fassaert is not interested, when considering the rights and wrongs of Emilienne's case: we would like to hear the Government the angle at any time and must draw our own conclusions about the balance between economic needs Belgium and the rights of individual citizens. In most cases it takes a unobtrusive, fly-on-the-wall approach, his carefully composed pictures (three cinematographers are credited) search for dusty, branched beauty of dereliction of duty, decline and decay.

High aerial shots present Doel as fog shrouded, receding ghostly zone already in the past and haunted by the living. The sound is perhaps inevitable, elegiac and sad even welcome but there are moments of propellant humor that prevent that procedure to overly bleak or dour. There's something about Emilienne absolutely uncompromising: "I am still here," claimed the last minutes, holding the proverbial immovable object from unstoppable enemies.
Venue: International Film Festival Berlin (Forum)
Production companies: SNG; CineTeFilmproducties
Director/Writer: Tom Fassaert
Manufacturer: Digna Sinke, Willem Thijssen
Directors of photography: Daniel bouquet, Diderik Evers, in Steenhuizen
Music: Tobias Borkert
Editor: Tom Fassaert, Axel Skovdal Roelofs, Thabi Mooi
Sell: SNG, Amsterdam
No review, 76 minutes