Ben X

Belgium, Netherlands

2007

93 Min

Color

1.85:1

Flemish

Currently 3.1/5 Stars.
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PROD Burny Bos, Peter Bouckaert, Erwin Provoost, Michiel de Rooij, Sabine Veenendaal

CAST Greg Timmermans, Marijke Pinoy, Cesar De Sutter, Gilles De Schrijver, Katrien Pierlet

MUSIC Praga Khan

São Paulo, Berlinale (Generation), Istanbul (International Competition): FIPRESCI Prize

Synopsis

Ben is different. His life is a universe to itself, where he plays his favorite on line computer game Archlord avidly, trying hard to train himself for the real world he lives in. The harsh world of a technical school is for him a daily kind of hell. As the horror of being a daily subject to bullying grows, Ben devises a plan. Then Scarlite comes into his life, the girl he has met in his on-line game. That wasn’t part of the plan… –IMDb

Director

Nic Balthazar

Nic Balthazar (born 24 July 1964, Ghent) is a Belgian film director and a TV/radio personality (presenter, reporter, producer).

His first movie, Ben X, came out in 2007 and has received critical acclaim. The next feature film which Balthazar directed, Tot Altijd, was released in January 2012.

In Flanders he is well known as a movie critic and television presenter. To some extent he is also known as a positive vegetarian activist. —Wikipedia

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Justin Oakey

17Nov12

Some sequences were quite pretty, but overall this film is a stale and simplified way of looking at disability and bullying. The constant referral to the gaming world was tiring and overused - the audience isn't that stupid, it understands Ben's making reference to his game world, the constant referral is just an annoyance. "Rat King" from Finland seems like a much more interesting meditation on a similar subject.