20/11/2025 - Playing close attention to nuance, Karin Junger’s third feature film carefully conveys the complex emotional and social repercussions of child sexual abuse

Daan is 12 years old and is a model student in a football academy. He has a special relationship with his coach, Ries, a 45-year-old man who knows how to motivate his little players and keep them entertained. Daan has enormous admiration for him and, little by little, Ries takes advantage of this. It’s in this quintessentially male universe – that of a junior football team – that Dutch director Karin Junger sets his meticulous story about the complex emotional and social repercussions of child sexual abuse, in his third feature film, The Pupil. The movie is currently screening in competition at the 26th Lecce European Film Festival having premiered in the Netherlands Film Festival back in September and taken part in the Youth and Children's Film Festival, unspooling within Tallinn’s Black Nights event.

Daan (Bart de Wilde) is a placid young man. He has a loving family, he goes dancing with his friends and he’s especially interested in a girl his age. But what he really loves is playing football. His coach, Ries (Gijs Naber), has high hopes for him and Daan starts to become a bit of a “teacher’s pet”: they go to the football together – with the approval of the boy’s parents who really like Ries – and they increasingly find themselves in the coach’s home watching matches on TV together or playing on his PlayStation. Soon enough, however, football games on screen are replaced by porn films, which Ries, nonchalantly channel-hopping, continually suggests the boy should watch. And at the coach’s house, where the blinds are constantly lowered, decidedly illicit activities begin to unfold.

With great care and attention to nuance, Junger - who also wrote the film’s screenplay - shows just how easy it is for a young boy to fall victim to a sexual predator, especially when a relationship of trust and admiration has been established and at a time when you’re discovering your own sexuality, led by impulse and curiosity. The film sounds an alarm and urges us not to ignore the signs, because even with the best social controls (his family, the team, the school, his friends, no-one leaves Daan alone), evil always manages to wind its way in. The evolution of the teenage protagonist’s emotions – evolving from initial embarrassment to increasing discomfort, followed by social withdrawal and surly behaviour towards others – is subtly conveyed through the looks and gestures of this young newcomer actor, who holds everything inside.

Daan harbours conflicted feelings towards his charismatic coach, and his entourage don’t make it easy for him to open up to them. Junger’s film also shines a light on the community’s reaction to this scandal, and raises the question of how this reaction might add to the trauma. The subject of child sexual abuse has frequently been explored in film; the added value here is that the victim reacts and, with the support of his loved ones, he finds the strength to go on, his head held high, leaving viewers in hope that this episode ends up being nothing but a brief, horrible interlude in an otherwise long and joy-filled life.

The Pupil was produced by The Film Kitchen (Netherlands) in co-production with Krater Films (Belgium), Polar Bear (Belgium) and BNNVARA (Netherlands). World sales are entrusted to Pluto Film.

(Translated from Italian)