Gods of Molenbeek – Aatos ja Amine (2019)

Directed by: Reetta Huhtanen | 82 minutes | documentary

‘Gods of Molenbeek’ is a haunting documentary by Finnish director Reetta Huhtanen. It is about the friendship between two six-year-old boys who live in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. According to the press, Chilean/Finnish Aatos and his Muslim neighbor Amine live in a ‘hotbed of jihad’. That may be true, but it’s also just the world of the two friends who play there and talk about their image of God. Aatos explores the neighborhood with his homemade periscope, dresses up as the gods Hermes and Thor and goes out into nature with classmate Flo. There he asks questions of life: “Is God nature?” The compelling Flo gives an intriguing answer to this: “Do you believe in humanity or in nature?”

You sometimes forget that you are dealing with six-year-olds, but in the world they live in every day, there is of course a different setting from one day to the next. The attacks on the metro in Brussels and Zaventem airport play a role in the background: the checks at the entrance of the metro, the broadcasting in the metro, the multitude of soldiers on the street and the news report that tells how many people have been killed and injured. . The street noise at a demonstration/demonstration: “We are Muslims, not terrorists!” In short: get on with it as a six-year-old.

The two different worlds of Amine and Aatos disappear when they play: they listen to spiders, fly on a carpet to Arabia (according to Amine to ‘the desert with the ghosts’), scooter, play football or dress up as a mummy. Aatos listens from Finnish tradition to stories in which several gods figure and Amine reads the Quran with his father and then prays.

Disarming. A term that certainly applies when you hear the three protagonists in ‘Goden van Molenbeek’ talk. Aatos asks his mother: “Mama, why did those people die?”. Together with Amine, he wonders ‘why people go to war’. The two discuss in the mosque about who the greatest God is and whether Jesus is the son of God or a prophet. We see the lectures at school, Aatos about the golden eagle and Flo about fear. She describes this as ‘a defect that causes problems'(!!!???). Again, we’re dealing with six-year-olds here… You could almost lie on the couch with the very precocious Flo. Aatos declares that he is afraid ‘because we can die’. And to the question, “What is after death?” is told by Flo that it is ‘a big, big black hole’. Phew, those are great themes for little kids. So add staggering and gripping to disarming. The director films the boys close to the skin, the faces are full of expression. And then there’s the ending that moves to tears. Aatos moving to Finland: “I want to keep playing with Amine.” And Amine who -against her better judgment- is comforted by his mother when Aatos drives away…

‘Goden van Molenbeek’ shows ‘normal’ life through the eyes of six-year-olds. But then, how ‘normal’ is life? Such young children should not have to talk about these topics for a long time. But how beautiful that at times they can forget everything around them and be a child. Because they still are, kids. Children who become adults very early due to the changing circumstances. This should be banned in every neighborhood anywhere in the world.