646f9e108c A 15-year-old girl in a black gang in Brussels must choose between loyalty and love when she falls for a Moroccan boy from a rival gang. The city of Brussels, plagued by high rates of youth unemployment, is home to nearly forty street gangs, and the number of young people drawn into the city's gang culture increases each year. It's in this criminal milieu that directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah set Black, a pulse-pounding contemporary take on a Shakespearean tragedy. Worlds collide when Mavela (Martha Canga Antonio), a teenage girl with ties to Brussels' Black Bronx gang, meets Marwan (Aboubakr Bensaihi), a member of a rival Moroccan gang, at a police station. Keenly aware of the consequences of getting involved with someone from another gang, they at first resist their attraction to one another, but they can only resist for so long. Just when they've started to imagine a different life for themselves, a terrifying incident reminds Mavela where she belongs - and, more precisely, to whom. In order to break free, Mavela and Marwan will have to betray the very loyalties on which their gangs are founded. And they know what lies ahead for them if they don't. El Arbi and Fallah's film moves forward at an electrifying pace, with furious energy and a gritty realism reminiscent of epic gangster films like City of God and Goodfellas. Ricocheting from moments of extreme tenderness to scenes of extreme violence, and enhanced by the raw performances of its young leads, Black is a full-on, no-holds-barred experience that will resonate long after you've left the cinema. Fifteen year old Mavela is a member of the notorious gang Black Bronx. She falls head over heels in love with the charismatic Marwan, a boy from the rival gang 1080-ers. The two young people are brutally forced to choose between loyalty to their gang or the love for each other. An impossible choice … or not? Adil El Arbi seems hell-bent on putting migrants into bad daylight, or one would hope…because if this was a factual portrayal of these people we would be right to want them gone as soon as possible. As far as the story goes Adil just took the Romeo & Juliet template and changed some characters names, ethnicities and locations and voila, the script almost wrote itself. Really, this drains the film of almost any surprises coz we all know how that story went. That's just being lazy Adil… As a plus, I do have to say the movie is well shot. The camera-work and cinematography is pretty good. The music as you might have guessed is horrible, atrocious rap music, that's what the gangsta boys listen to innit. But we all know that this is the lowest form of music after Flemish Butcher songs right? So turn the sound off or watch with earplugs. And now for the biggest problem of the whole movie: the characters. These are the biggest bunch of violent, stealing, raping a-holes you would never want to associate with, live in the neighborhood off or even encounter in your lifetime. Normally you as a watcher should be able to sympathize with or at least root for the protagonists but this film makes that very difficult. The black girl is about the only one you can feel for but the rest of these mothers could not die fast enough for me. Just as in 'IMAGE' these migrant characters have nothing but contempt for each other (Blacks vs Moroccans) but most of all for the working class Flemish people. We seems to be the bottom of the barrel for them. That nukes all hope that integrating these people in our society will ever have a chance, or that is what this film is shouting to us in capital letters. Adding insult to injury: this film is financed partially by the VAF, but the only Flemish words spoken in this flick are curse words like 'klootzak', 'makkak', 'hoer', etc…money well spent VAF… So if you want to get royally p*ssed off watch this movie, if you want a couple of hours of solid entertainment watch Deadpool. A 15-year-old girl in a black gang in Brussels must choose between loyalty and love when she falls for a Moroccan boy from a rival gang. The city of Brussels, plagued by high rates of youth unemployment, is home to nearly forty street gangs, and the number of young people drawn into the city's gang culture increases each year. It's in this criminal milieu that directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah set Black, a pulse-pounding contemporary take on a Shakespearean tragedy. Worlds collide when Mavela (Martha Canga Antonio), a teenage girl with ties to Brussels' Black Bronx gang, meets Marwan (Aboubakr Bensaihi), a member of a rival Moroccan gang, at a police station. Keenly aware of the consequences of getting involved with someone from another gang, they at first resist their attraction to one another, but they can only resist for so long. Firecracker chemistry between the two leads makes this doomed Romeo and Juliet romance all the more tragically persuasive. Mavela’s kittenish little girl voice is utterly beguiling; Marwan’s adolescent swagger doesn’t quite conceal the sweet boy beneath.
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335 weeks ago