DIX-SEPT ANS

Who ever said youth was the happiest time in life? According to Jean-Benoît, seventeen is the worst age possible. This young man is an apprentice to a car-mechanic. He longs to escape his 'fucked up life' -- fatherless since the age of twelve and with a mother who seems to do nothing but whine. His dream: a job, his own car and nice little weekend-trips with his girlfriend.

But reality soon catches up with Jean-Benoît: he hates his apprenticeship. While the school threatens to expel him, he refuses to do anything in the workshop that he finds unnecessary -- just about anything. He rebels against the system, closing up and refusing to cooperate with his master, his teacher and finally director Didier Nion. The film-project seems doomed to failure.

Didier Nion accompanied Jean-Benoît over 27 months. He watches him handling the tools during a tyre change, follows him to the beach and listens in on his conversations with his girlfriend. He gets extremely close to him when he asks Jean-Benoît to tell him how he feels, what has happened to him since their last meeting. When the teachers and mechanics themselves start coming to Nion to complain about Jean-Benoit, it becomes clear that the director no longer is a mere spectator. He has become part of the boy's life, an invisible protagonist in his own film.