Kumail Syed - Les enfants ont des oreilles

By interweaving his memories with those of four other people – Alpha, Bilal, Lila and his mother – Kumail Syed sketches out contemporary forms of working-class existence in Les Marolles.

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Les enfants ont des oreilles (Kumail Syed, 2025, 37min)

After reading Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims, in which the author returns to the working-class village of his childhood, Kumail Syed realised that his life was shaped through a very different experience of class than those around him. Up until that point the filmmaker had denied his background. When he realised that his rejection was an insult to the reality that his parents had experienced, he decided to revisit the neighbourhood of his childhood.

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Les enfants ont des oreilles bears witness to Syed’s class of origin through the form of a filmed diary. It shows what the working class can represent today through tableaux vivants from the neighbourhood, as well as through the testimonies of the director and his mother, and the people he encountered during his return.

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About

Kumail Syed (1998, Brussels) studied music before pursuing audiovisual arts at KASK School of Arts, where he graduated in 2025 with the mid-length film Les enfants ont des oreilles. Since October of that year, he has been a guest researcher at KASK.

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In French, and occasionally Peul, Spanish and Polish, with English subtitles.

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This film was made possible thanks to the help and support of Alpha Sylla, Bilal Mejdoubi, Lila Van Dorst, Agnieszka Gasiewska, Jolke Van Aerde, Stijn Verschelden, Tom Szpirer, Hannes Verhoustraete, Dieter Diependaele, Michel Coquette, Frederik Leroux, Ruben Machtelinckx, Hilde D’Haeyere, Raf Enkels, Edwin Carels, Els Viaene, Bob Mees, Jasmijn Cedee, Wannes Vanspauwen, Martijn Van de Wiele, Julien Gastelo and, of course, all the people encountered during this return to the neighbourhood.