Search Film, Company, People...

GODS OF MOLENBEEK

By Reeta HUHTANEN

Social issues - Completed 2019

In Molenbeek-Saint-Jean Aatos, a playful and curious six-year-old boy, sets out to find his own god in a world shaken by suicide bombings.

- Year of production
- 2019
- Genres
- Social issues, Female director, Documentary
- Countries
- GERMANY, FINLAND, BELGIUM
- Languages
- ENGLISH, ARABIC, FINNISH, FRENCH
- Director(s)
- Reeta HUHTANEN
- Producer(s)
- Ira TONDOWSKI (Tondowski Films GbR), Alex TONDOWSKI (Tondowski Films GbR)
- Synopsis
- Aatos is six years old and he has come to the age where his mind is consumed by big abstract questions. His best friends are Amine (7-year-old Muslim boy) and Flo (6-year-old atheist girl). As he searches for his own worldview, Aatos faces big questions, and the answers he finds to them are tested as the three friends present differing viewpoints. Aatos and Amine live in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, near the Brussels city center. The daily routines of the surrounding Muslim community seem to be underpinned by a God that rises above everything else, Allah. This awakens a longing in the protagonist for something larger than human life. Since unlike Amine, Aatos is not part of the Muslim community, he wants to find a god for himself.
  During an intensive period of research, googling and going through the numerous books on gods in the library, Aatos rejects such obvious candidates as Zeus and Thor because they don’t match his strict criteria. Finding one’s own god isn’t such an easy task, after all.
  But one day Aatos finds what he is looking for, he sees a picture of Mercurius in a mythology book – this is his God – he has finally found his own god. Aatos is so smitten with Mercurius that he wants to dress like the god: white shirt, socks, small leather pouch and wings sewed on his sandals with help from his mother, which he paints gold. His joy knows no bounds and he fleets through the streets, visits mosques, a church and a museum to see pictures of angels.
  In the middle of the happiest times of his life the world around him falls apart. Molenbeek is filled with policemen and helicopters. All of a sudden everyone is overcome by seriousness and concern. The adults act strange and stations along the familiar metro line are closed and dark. Armed soldiers patrol everywhere. Aatos’s sensitive mind sucks in the feelings around him and deals with them through his characteristic, bouncily associative imagination.
  Instead of the playground he goes to an anti-terrorism demonstration with his parents. The people there repeat powerful slogans that stay playing in his head. The people’s despair and the surfaced emotions awaken his concern and he turns to his God for help.
  The terrorist attacks shock the adults in Aatos’s close community. At school the teacher tries to explain through a lame metaphor of a hyena why the terrorists did those evil things. Aatos doesn’t accept these explanations, he tries to find the answers himself.
  Violence and death are big questions that are hard for a child to deal with. As Aatos plays with his friend Amine, the violence pours out in their games. Lego figures wage such a fierce battle that Aatos has to remove his Lego Mercurius into safety.
  Aatos brings up the subject of Mercurius with his friends but the response is disheartening. Amine hasn’t even heard about Mercurius and Flo says that God doesn’t even exist: “If you believe in God you’ve lost your mind.” Aatos’s world crumbles, he walks alone and at the deepest moment of despair h