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A Stranger's Skin NL premiere
Documentary | Christophe Hermans | Belgium | 2011 | 52 min | French spoken | English subtitlesVoorstelling: Saturday 23 March 15:30 | Studio/K 2
Twenty-year-old Arnaud is so overweight that, with the exception of walking the dog, he barely leaves the house. He started putting on weight when his mother died. He now lives with his father, with whom he has an antagonistic relationship, in the Belgian town of Spa. One day he decides to drastically change his lifestyle, beginning with gastric bypass surgery.
Shedding his old body goes hand-in-hand with shedding his old life. From an insecure and isolated 20-year-old, he gradually becomes a normal young man. Following the operation he joins (diet) clubs, builds a social life, visits university open days and eventually exchanges the attic room in his parents’ house, where he had turned doing nothing into an art form, for his own flat.
A Stranger's Skin is a remarkable story of willpower. As viewers, we experience Arnaud’s fight against obesity from an almost painful proximity. The camera follows him everywhere: from the shower to the hospital and from the hairdresser to the gym. The film shows that drink and drugs are not the only forms of emotional escape, but that ‘innocent’ food can be just as damaging.
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