Ajouad El Miloudi wants in #Ajouad see if it is true what is said about thefinancial center of the Netherlands, the Zuidas in Amsterdam. work hard playhard, pinch suits , pinch of cocaine. The people who guide him into theclosed stronghold are not merger and acquisition lawyers, charteredaccountants or bankers, but above all outsiders. Oscar Westra van Holthe,systemic coach, who has his office in one of the skyscrapers, is an oldacquaintance, I also saw him in Sander and the gap tell how ‘inhumane andenvironmentally unfriendly’ is the place where he once started earning money.Arno Wellens, former banker, also likes to emphasize the „ dark side of theZuidas.
A recruiter receives Ajouad at home, in his SUV, and at the office whereemployees sound the gong when they successfully place personnel at a company.At the end of the week, the 10K’s and 20K’s plus corresponding bonuses for thestaff roll over the table and then it’s time to fill up the shots in the pub.We kind of had that image in mind, yes.
He also accompanies a partner of one of the largest international law firms –if the cardboard coffee cup on the desk doesn’t lie, it’s Stibbe. Valériestarts early and goes home a little earlier than her colleagues, because shehas children. She eats with her family, puts her daughters to bed, and thenspends two more hours at home behind the computer. “Good for your career,”Ajouad assumes. “Good for my job,” she says. Ajouad wants to hear from herthat she “always puts her children first” and how that came about. I thoughtcrazy. Valérie is, say, a working parent.
Mischief
And then, then I saw a fairy tale. Really, all the elements were in it: amysterious, misty mountain landscape, a poverty-stricken existence, animals,parents who want to sell their children, an old folk tradition, an inescapablemarriage, and an almost-adult girl who resists her fate. The documentary_Children of the fog_ oozes mischief from beginning to end. For three years,director Diem Ha Le followed the North Vietnamese girl Di. Beautiful child,hard worker on the land, good student at school, cheeky daughter. She iseleven when she reenacts the ancient custom of her people, the Hmong, in therocky mountains with her friends. Around the New Year, young men are allowedto kidnap a girl and make her a bride. So it was with Di’s sister La chess atfourteen, pregnant with her second child at seventeen.
Di’s family lives in a remote mountain village in a wooden house with a mudfloor and a corrugated iron roof. They work the land. Rice, indigo,vegetables. They keep buffaloes, pigs and chickens and roast them over a fireindoors. Father and mother took turns drinking home-brewed wine from plasticbottles. Archaic yes, but certainly not retarded. Because there are alsotelephones, there is the internet, Facebook.
It’s still a game for Di when she flirts with a boy online, his name is Vang(!). She’s 14.5 and damn, he’s waiting for her with his motorcycle on NewYear’s Eve and she’s going home with him. The next day, his parents are at herdoorstep. With bottles of liquor and whether the dowry can be negotiated. Theparents think their daughter is on the young side, but they think they arerich. They thought of two $2,000 and $300 envelopes, ten pounds of chicken andone hundred pounds of pork, and twenty gallons of wine.
One problem: Di doesn’t want to get married. And then it gets very grim. Thein-laws drag the loot out of her parental home by arms and legs, her motherwatches, arms folded, the filmmaker even throws herself in between. It endsmore or less well, all well. See for yourself how it ends.