Braquage à la marocaine

• My project

The project I was involved in is called, well I will say it first in French because it has a French title: "Braquage à la marocaine". Do you know what braquage means? Well, it is difficult to explain, it would be something in English like "hold-up in a Moroccan style".
I was working in the youth centre in Liège where I am responsible for a group of Moroccan guys. We were trying to run a theatre play, but it did not work. So, one of the guys said, why don't we try a movie? We thought it was a good idea and I helped them with its development. Then we presented an application that was accepted. I know that things do not always work so easily, so we included some training about the technical issues. After the training came the idea of the braqueurs, but the real ones that indeed exist in the area. We wanted to portray this problem by making fun of it.

• The outcome

Well, the first outcome was the product itself, the movie we shot. It took us a whole year to complete the training phase and the creation of the film, with all the positive learning aspects involved in the different steps.
Secondly, for the first time we managed to gather 200 people in our Youth Centre for the exhibition of the preview of the film! It was the first time that some of the guys in the neighbourhood had stepped into our theatre! You know, our community is split; in the north part there is a majority of youngsters of Moroccan origin, whereas in the south they are from traditional Belgian families. It was magic to see them altogether for the showing of the film!
An immediate effect was the shooting of the second one, supported this time by the biggest cultural centre in Liège. It is the first time that we attracted their sponsorship for one of our activities!
To our youth centre, and also to me, the project brought a lot of credibility. Now, the centre is much more popular and the guys trust my work. And for the community itself, well many of the "braqueurs" are not interested any more in their small thefts and prefer to join our activities!