Let's face it clearly, Laura Wandel's debut film owes a lot to the cinema of the Dardenne Brothers.
Hand-held camera perpetually attached to the characters, in turn almost always shot in three-quarters, strictly at the height of a child as which in most shots can only be seen from the torso up.
There seem to be two imperatives that the director has imposed on herself; concentrate and eliminate.
In keeping with its original title, her debut initially transports us into a microcosm; the elementary school of Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) and her older brother Abel (Günter Duret).
For the little girl these are her first days and she thinks she can count on her brother who, however, is a victim of bullying.
Outside the school practically nothing else seems to exist other than the increasingly elusive presence of the father of the two children (Karim Leclou).
It is a real process for which, progressively, Laura Wandel almost seems to proceed in concentric circles that focus more and more on the detail or on Nora, the true center of the entire story.
The rest is eliminated step by step, first and foremost with precise aesthetic choices.
Beyond the character framed, as we said from close range, everything else is almost always out of focus, reduced to shadows and even more so to sounds.
Sound, on the other hand, plays a fundamental role .
Often having to directly address the two excellent debuting actors, Laura Wandel reconstructed the film's soundtrack almost entirely in the studio, imagining it, as she herself explains, as a sort of musical score composed of ambient noises and omnipresent cries of children.
The same importance is given to the dialogues and the fundamental use of off-screen starting from the violence which, in fact, is almost never seen.
Take, for example, the scene in which the bullies apologize to Abel.
Only him is in the frame while the real protagonists of the scene, i.e. the other children, the principal and the parents are all off-screen, are never framed and we only hear their voices.
Precisely because of this process of progressive concentration on Nora alone we think that bullying is not the main "theme" of the work.
Certainly Laura Wandel reminds us how cruel they can be, the children are ruthless and violent.
However, we think that, as underlined by the aesthetic choices, what the author is interested in is recording Nora's emotions and growth.
The little girl, initially and rightly attached to her brother , first he will be able to gain his own independence then, also because of what is happening to Abel, he will oscillate between inclusion and exclusion and the relationship between the two will be put to the test.
A world is the story of a little girl thrown into a cruel and ruthless world and how she can react to this experience and how all this can damage her deep relationship with Abel.
What is of interest is the growth path faced by Nora.< br />Of course Un monde is also a warning that reminds us how violence only generates more violence and more oppression in a mortal spiral that risks dragging everything to the bottom, even the love between two child brothers.
Until the tight embrace of those who truly love us comes to save us.