[CRITICAL] THE HEAVEN will be WAITING

THE SKY will WAIT for deals with a subject we can no longer hot : young girls indoctrinated by Daech who want to wage jihad. Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar (The Heirs) has written its fourth feature-length film with writer Emilie Frèche, already co-writer of They are everywhere of Yvan Attal. She presented her film to premiere at Festival of francophone Film of Angoulême, surrounded by his actresses Sandrine Bonnaire (Catherine), Clotilde Courau (Sylvie) – that interpret the mothers – and Noémie Merlant (Sonia) and Naomi Amarger – who interpret the girls. They were accompanied by Dounia Bouzar, founder of the Center for the Prevention against Sectarian Excesses linked to Islam, which interprets its own role in the film. All six of them, seized by emotion, insisted on the responsibility of fiction to question and to raise awareness about the phenomena of our society.

Stages of indoctrination, Melanie, we’ll know everything. Nothing will be spared of his doubts complotistes, his indoctrination programmed via the Internet and via social networks, his harassment, his brain washing. Her divorced mother who raises alone her daughter, presented as little cultivated, is very busy with her hair salon. She sees nothing, not imagining for a single moment his daughter to become a muslim, much less radicalized. We are witnessing, aghast and helpless, to this decent to hell, which will begin to the mother through the message of his daughter from the airport. And then the waiting, the feeling that the French authorities can do nothing. This part of the story is very moving, and reminds one of the father after the departure of her daughter in The Cowboys, Thomas Bidegain.

As for Sonia, she is arrested by the police while she is on the verge of committing a terrorist attack. But the director decides yet not to exploit this track and remains focused on the role that is going to have to play his family. It is the witness in disbelief of the decision of this judge, who returns home to her parents helpless to avoid it to go to a detention centre. Xavier Durringer was already very well shown in the movie Do not forsake me the full involvement of parents and the reconnection indispensable with the memories of the childhood. In THE SKY will WAIT, the girl will also be désendoctrinée thanks to Dounia, who explains to him in an educational way what is or is not Islam. The interpretation of the actors for the family of Sonia is a little theatrical, when one of the family of Mélanie wants to be more inner and poignant.

“Despite some choice in directing questionable, THE SKY will WAIT, has the merit to exist and have real pedagogical virtues.”

The groups of word being the nerve centre of the subject, we understand that to highlight these two courses of indoctrination in parallel and without duplication, the filmmaker has taken the party to cross. Two young girls who do not know, two families, two destinies. The one hand (Melanie), and the other caught in time (Sonia). The one that goes to a form of minimalism is misleading, when the other is reborn to life after being enferrée. One who knows the muslim culture by his father, when the other has no reference. These two different stories are therefore binding as the degree of indoctrination and fail to join a meeting very moving of the two mothers in one of the groups of word. But this narrative process of THE SKY will WAIT, without a unit, or of time or place, failure to appear disconcerting, and sometimes even confused. The flash-back are not always obvious to grasp and play on the tips a little easy hairstyle Sylvie : long hair and smile that is displayed on a beaming face and short hair on a face in tears.

Of course, consciences are disturbed , THE SKY will be WAITING. How would they not ? But tackle with courage the problem of indoctrination in as detailed a manner however finds its limitations in the choice even of the staging. A mix of genres (fiction and reality) not a good idea. The participation of the anthropologist Dounia Bouzar gives the film the status of a quasi-documentary on his person, almost an ode, taking the not so unsettling about the story. We see it animate to false groups to speak with parents baffled in the face of change of attitude or even the departure of their child. It is also filmed in the process of de-radicalization of youth that the police prevented her from leaving France. Not necessarily known to the general public, what some people call “Ms. désembrigadement” came to the aid of many families. But his methods and his vision of Islam has also been the subject of controversy, and it should not be that the film, whose subject is also delicate, suffering.

Despite some choice in directing questionable, THE SKY will WAIT , has the merit to exist and have real pedagogical virtues. It should be shown, such a documentary to a wide audience of young people and parents and could be a source some of the reflections and exchanges.

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