23/01/2025 - Robin Vanbesien delivers an empathic, poetic and political essay film honouring the memory of Mawda, a child killed by police gunfire

Discovered in the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum Expanded section and then in Film Fest Gent’s Official Competition, the debut feature-length documentary Hold on to Her is set to screen twice in Belgium in these early months of 2025, at the Tournai Ramdam Film Festival and in Brussels’ En ville! festival. To date, it’s been the field of experimental film in which director Robin Vanbesien has distinguished himself. With Hold on to Her, he edges closer towards the documentary form whilst favouring a hybrid approach, blending super 8 and super 16 shots, and an installation/performance to look back over the Mawda case, which didn’t shake Belgium half as much as it should have 6 years ago.

"Daughter of Phrast and Shamden, and sister of Hama, Mawda Shawri was two years old in 2018 when she was killed by a bullet fired by a Belgian police officer during a border control operation on a motorway." Thus begins Vanbesien’s film, stating the facts as they were and immediately humanising the situation, because that’s what was desperately needed for Mawda, a "collateral victim", as she was described by a dehumanising immigration policy. Vanbesien takes the angle of empathy to tackle this tragedy. He gathers together twenty or so stakeholders, living either legally or illegally, and shares official documents with them: police reports, court documents and press articles. We hear those who speak and see those who listen to them. Between document readings and testimonies in different languages which all resonate with one another (Flemish, French, English, Kurdish), a concerned train of thought emerges: the need for collective mourning to provide a channel for solidarity.

The facts are brutal, and the filmmaker brings them back to mind by placing the power of evocation centre stage. Readings of police reports are delivered via voice-overs while we observe those listening. Contemplative shots on film quietly and metaphorically take us back to the site of the tragedy, roads passing by before our eyes. During a check carried out on a van carrying 30 people without legal papers, a police officer shoots through a window without warning. A bullet hits Mawda, a little two-year-old girl. In the first instance, the police declare the child to be dead because she was held aloft like a human shield by those inside of the van to frighten the officers, before being thrown out of the window. The investigation revealed a whole other sequence of events, but the media narrative was constructed around these false declarations. Mawda’s parents and her brother were remanded into custody separately and then deported without even being allowed to collect their daughter’s body.

By exposing the facts and the reflections of those citizens taking part in this collective opinion-voicing, Hold On to Her shines a light on the inhumanity with which the system treats men and women and its tendency to hide behind vocabulary which is already alienating in itself (migrants, refugees). Over and above the responsibilities of different individuals involved in this affair, it also asks what on earth made this situation possible. It’s an essay film which takes a modest yet plain-speaking and resolutely militant approach to question the fate we reserve for fellow human beings in our societies, which have a habit of closing ranks.

Hold On to Her was produced by Belgian firms Visualantics and Timely. The film is due for release in Belgium on 30 April, broadcast by the independent organisation Art Faces Art.

(Translated from French)