Under Control

Early 20th century, in the Ughetto family's home village, Ughettera, Northern Italy. Life in the region had become very difficult and the Ughettos dreamed of a better life abroad. Legend has it that Luigi Ughetto crossed the Alps and started a new life in France, thus changing his beloved family's destiny forever. His grandson retraces their story.

Increasingly disheartened by the monotony of his provincial existence, young Senegalese Bandiougou has not long to wait before he can leave his native town forever. However, his hopes of a passage to Europe are crushed and, from that moment onwards, the young man's life is beset by a series of misfortunes which he sees as a curse.

This film tells the story of Antoine, a miner from the Liège region who, at the end of the 19th century, discovers a gift for healing, an ability to listen and to soothe the suffering of the working class who endure a hard life. A good man, he went on to found the one and only Belgian religion that has never existed: Antoinism. This documentary film traces the astonishing life of Louis Antoine and the incredible development of a social and religious movement that has been forgotten in Belgian history. A movement that nevertheless had hundreds of thousands of followers in Wallonia, France and as far afield as Brazil, to the point of threatening the power of the Catholic Church in our regions.

The dialogue is based on the Gospel according to St John. The apostles are played by friends (the disciples) of Boris Lehman, most of them movie-makers, filmed in front of the last house still standing opposite the new buildings of the European Union. Judas is played by Claudio Pazienza and Christ by Boris Lehman. The film was shot in a matter of hours on a Sunday morning, with an incredible decor in a street that had been razed to the ground by property developers, just before the police arrived.