The story centres on a group of teenagers street cast in their neighbourhood and selected to play in a feature film during the summer. The film tells the story of this film shoot and of the connections that will be formed during it.

Julian (The Film Seeker) on letterboxd wrote:
You’ve certainly seen films about making films before, and you’ve no doubt seen films about troubled inner-city youth before. But save the eye-rolling until after you’ve read about The Worst Ones, because in traversing these clichéd jungles with the sort of rugged, amateurish enthusiasm that would annoy any cynical viewer from the jump, Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret fully embrace one particular advantage that their film has over all those that came before it: the very fact that it did come after all those other films.
The advantage of learning from past errors seems simple enough, but it’s a lesson that so many burgeoning filmmakers fail to heed in the quest to make a name for themselves—ironically, by stumbling into the same paths as so many before them. All this isn’t to say that The Worst Ones is some virtuosic piece of original meta-production, but the rough candidness with which it tackles its subject matter does allow its more rote elements to feel less like crutches and more like stepping-stools towards a more poignant end.
In detailing the production of a film using amateur child actors, Akoka and Gueret of course adhere to the sort of close-quarters handheld camerawork that complements such frenetic instability. But once more, in learning from the errors of the past, the directors set their sights on the ethical aspects of filming with children, particularly those with trauma in their rearview. Most of this intrigue comes from the lanky Johan Heldenbergh as the film’s Flemish, youthful-Haneke-looking director, who sometimes pushes these children to points verging on improper at best and potentially scarring at worst. (Come to think of it, this guy’s methods may not be much more mentally damaging than the kind of material the actual Haneke has put children through…)
An eccentric character such as this risks placing The Worst Ones firmly within a specific variety of child abuse trauma porn, but the power of the film comes from just how closely he—and the directors of this director—straddles that line. Akoka and Gueret show the greater personal implications of these sometimes-reckless methods, but the character is never firmly established as a tyrant or a creep. All that is clear from what we see in the film is his passion, and the enthusiasm that rubs off on these pent-up children in need of an outlet for expression makes one wonder whether this potentially exploitative project was the best way to go about exploring these outlets.
Less generous viewers could easily apply that reading to the film housing the film, but Akoka and Gueret never pretend to have anything more pressing or revelatory on their hands than the nakedly nuanced dynamics in front of them. That level of self-awareness, mixed with a surprisingly consistent helping of sincere humour, prevents The Worst Ones from living up to its title, and keeps some semblance of interest—hopeful or not—alive for the future of both young actors and the filmmakers guiding them.

	
Les.Pires.2022.FRENCH.1080p.WEB.H264-SEiGHT.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 40 min
Size: 	5.04 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1916x800 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	6 792 kb/s
BPP: 	0.185
Audio
#1:  	French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 384 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/0B67C7D14242D8F/Les.Pires.2022.FRENCH.1080p.WEB.H264-SEiGHT.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/EDEF47E3B5C44EC/Les.Pires.2022.FRENCH.1080p.WEB.H264-SEiGHT.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Lise Akoka & Romane Gueret – Les pires AKA The Worst Ones (2022) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.