Notes from Brussels (2021)

Directed by: Nadine van Loon | 79 minutes | documentary

Work-life balance is high on the agenda for many companies. It is important that employees know how to find a good mode in this (and that the employer offers them all the help they need). Not if you work in the stronghold of the EU: Brussels. Here civil servants, politicians and journalists work until they drop, in some (many?) cases literally. Filmmaker Nadine van Loon can talk about it: after a long career as a political assistant for a D66 MEP and then as an employee of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where she held various EU-related positions), she suffered a burnout and decided to 2012 she turned her back on ‘Brussels’ for the sake of her health. But the dynamic work environment continued to attract and from 2017 to 2021 Van Loon filmed three women who all started in the ‘European bubble’ in their twenties. What is their work-life balance and how do they feel about it?

The three women that Van Loon has selected for this purpose form a beautiful cross-section: not only in age, but also in function and background. The youngest, Anne-Cécile Gault (1991), is a political assistant to Nathalie Griesbeck, a French Member of the European Parliament. The Frenchwoman is single and works long days in which no minute is the same, but where the mobile phone is always ready. Her house doesn’t feel like ‘home’, because she has no idea how long she will live there, besides that she is almost only there to sleep. The Polish Joanna Sopinska (1977) is a journalist. Two years after Poland joined the EU, she came to work in Brussels. She has specialized in writing on trade, investment policy and foreign affairs. She is married (her husband also works in Brussels) and together they are raising their two sons. Joanna has doubts about returning to Poland. She’s ready, but are the conditions right there to raise two young children? Finally, Beate Gminder (1967) is a top official at the European Commission in the field of immigration and refugee policy. She is no stranger to days from 10 am to 12 noon and the intensive work has already taken its toll: we see her walking with crutches and later in the documentary she proudly shows her ‘standing desk’, because the physical complaints are caused by the many sit. She is married, her husband is an architect, but they only see each other on weekends.

‘Notes from Brussels’ is interesting for viewers who want to know more about the different functions performed in Brussels. You could also imagine that the film is useful for students who might be able to make a conscious(er) choice of study on the basis of this. The three women are all good storytellers and openly share their daily struggles with the viewer. Because it has to be said: this world is definitely not for people with a nine-to-five mentality (five in the morning to nine at night is getting closer). The uncertainty is enormous, given the continuous developments and the competition is fierce. The imprint that working for the EU puts on your private life is extremely large. Joanna may have had children; Beate admits with some regret that this has not happened because of her career (a nice story is how she and her partner got back together after twenty years). Anne-Cécile indicates that she sees herself as a mother in ten years’ time, but she really doesn’t have time for dating at the moment (“Imagine having to check your phone all the time to see if it has already answered! pretty for a date!”). Nice to see the zoom calls after the end credits that were made with the main characters afterwards.