Belgium

Synopsis

You have to realize that a street child leads the life of a dog. He is beaten, spends whole days begging, but it doesn't make him give up hope, so long as you let him have his station. That station may well be cold and anonymous - a home without a future, a barn whithout a roof, a pitiless fate - but he stays there, hangs around, makes do, and hopes. lt is his niche. Yet one day his memory forces him to leave this makeshift nest to make his way in a world where he belongs - and then what ...

Gigi (17 years old) and Monica (15 years old) live out their love with their gang in Bucharest North station.

A newcomer is on his way - Monica is expecting a baby. Gigi wants to leave the nondescript streets. He tells us his dreams: "To find a roof, start a family, build another family out of that family, and on like that ... till the end".
Is this child going to be born - where and how - and what will he or she ...?

By creating another life, Gigi and Monica go beyond the street child's place in the world, and bring us up against the Universal.

Are sparse and harsh living conditions enough to fix people's destiny in abject poverty?

GIGI, MONICA ... & BIANCA is a sequel to Dérives' prize-winning 1994 documentary by the same two directors, Dervaux and Yasmina Abdellaoui, which followed the lives of two street kids in the Romanian capital of Bucharest (Abdellaoui, who trained as a nurse before going on to study history of art and video production in Liège, had worked with the Terres des Hommes chari­table foundation in Bucharest).

In the new film, the teenagers - Gigi is 17, Monica 15 - are about to become parents, and the focus of GIGI, MONICA ... & BIANCA is on how the couple need to make the transition to a dif­ferent lifestyle when (or if) the child is born.
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Benoît Dervaux, Yasmina Abdellaoui

Produced by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Cinematography: Benoît Dervaux

Editing: Marie-Hélène Dozo

Sound: Benoît de Clerck, Yasmina Abdellaoui, Marc Dépasse

Nominations and Awards

  • European Documentary 1997