La Mif (2021)

Directed by: Fred Baillif | 110 minutes | drama | Actors: Charlie Areddy, Kassia Da Costa, Amandine Golay, Claudia Grob, Joyce Esther Ndayisenga, Amelie Tonsi, Sara Tulu, Anais Uldry

If you look at the list of achievements of the Swiss filmmaker Fred Baillif, you will immediately come to the conclusion that we are dealing with a committed and social person. ‘Tapis Rouge’ (2014), for example, is about a group of underprivileged young people from the lesser neighborhoods of Lausanne, who, thanks to the support of a social worker who believes in them, can try to make their dream come true. They dream of making their own film and landing on the red carpet of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Baillif always makes films that move on the interface between fiction and reality. He works with as many inexperienced actors as possible, who largely improvise their dialogues. And because of Baillif’s natural style of filming, you as a viewer regularly have the idea that you are watching a documentary. That social commitment is ingrained in Baillif; he graduated in social sciences from the University of Geneva and worked for many years as a social worker. Thanks to this experience, he has built up an entire network in Swiss youth care, which has provided him with a wealth of inspiration as a filmmaker.

His latest film, ‘La Mif’ (2021), is set in a shelter for teenage girls who, for various reasons, are no longer able to live at home, temporarily or otherwise. Despite their still young age – the girls are between thirteen and eighteen years old – they have already been through a lot and despite the fact that they cannot ‘just’ live at home, most of them like to be in the home, because they find support there. each other. The shelter has, as it were, become their new home and the residents their new family (the title of the film, ‘La Mif’, is slang and means something like ‘The Fam’). The events are set in motion by a small riot. Initially, boys and girls live together in the shelter, but after seventeen-year-old Audrey is caught in bed with a fourteen-year-old boy by a not much older and dutiful intern, all the alarm bells go off in the management. According to the protocol, in such a case, the supervisor on duty must first call the police (because according to the letter of the law rape is involved), and only then involve the supervisors. That’s what intern Kenza did well. But both Audrey and the boy had agreed to the sex, so the residents think there is nothing wrong. To prevent such situations in the future, it is decided to send the boys to another shelter.

Those cramped reactions when it comes to sex have a reason. We discover this as soon as seven girls are introduced to us one by one. A number of them have been raped, often by their own father. Other girls use sex as a way to fill the void in their lives because they never got the attention they deserve. The situation of Novinha, for example, is poignant, who in the shelter has her mouth full with whom she all goes to bed with and who regularly makes fun of other residents. We see a completely different Novinha when she is allowed to visit her mother for a weekend, to see how things are going. Mother has no time for her daughter, she has to go out. And during a meal together she is bored looking at her phone. Novinha had hoped to finally spend some time with her mother, bond and experience love, but was disappointed. As a viewer, that cuts through your soul. And just like Novinha, Alison, Precieuse, Caroline, Justine, Tamra and the aforementioned Audrey have their own personal stories, each more poignant than the next.

The actresses actually play themselves; they have all come into contact with youth care in their young lives and therefore remain close to themselves in their play: with heart on their tongue and without frills. Baillif observes them like a fly on the wall and opts for a narrative structure in which he introduces each girl, but does not immediately tell their whole story, only to tie up the necessary loose ends at the end of the film. He does this in the story of Lora (Claudia Grob, beautifully drawn face), the elderly director of the shelter, who has to deal with her own trauma and the support that the girls find in each other is actually very hard. can use. She seems to understand the girls better than many of her colleagues, who cling stubbornly to protocols. Lora is the emotional heart of the film, living with the burden of having fallen short in her own life and therefore fighting like a lioness for the well-being of ‘her’ girls. She stands at the crossroads of the perpetual tension between a benevolent system that seriously falls short and what these teenagers actually need and tends to be the only one who dares to take a different turn. Amazing how Grob, just like her young counterparts an amateur, plays her part!

In movies like this, you always hope to find a glimmer of hope at the end, so you can end the movie with a feeling that these girls will be okay. Where, for example, Sarah Gavron’s thematically related ‘Rocks’ (2019) emphasizes the resilience and vitality of teenage girls, ‘La Mif’ paints a somewhat bleak picture. Of course, the reality is not exactly rosy; Imagine being told on your eighteenth birthday that your asylum application has been rejected again and you have no idea where your family is, let alone have any idea where to go next. Then wouldn’t you also prefer to walk into Lake Geneva and never return from it?! But a ray of hope in the world is what you all so much grant these girls, if it isn’t already there in a movie, where can you draw your hope from in real life?