Belgian Filmmaker’s Ten-Year Journey with Moroccan-Belgian Neighbor Comes to TV
In 2015, a Belgian filmmaker knocked on the door of Lamia, a Moroccan-born mother raising three children alone in Brussels. The encounter marked the start of a ten-year filming project. This Tuesday, October 20, their story arrives on Belgian television.
It all began on a street in Schaerbeek, Brussels. One evening in 2015, Lidewij Nuitten realized she barely knew her neighbors. The young filmmaker decided to knock on their doors, camera in hand, for a Flemish television program. At the home of Lamia Benabbas, a 38-year-old Moroccan-born mother, she discovered a family that would transform her project, Belgian media outlet BRUZZ reports.
Lamia is raising her three children alone: Mehdi, 11, Meissa, 9, and Zaher, 7. She works two jobs to give them a future. The family lives in a working-class neighborhood, in a house without a garden, where the children grow up between school, friends and the street.
From her first visit, the filmmaker felt close to Lamia and her children. “We immediately hit it off,” she told BRUZZ. She asked if she could keep filming them. The family agreed, opening its door for another ten years, including through the most difficult moments.
Ten years of joys, hardships and change
The cameras follow the children through adolescence and their first steps into adult life. They also record the upheavals that affect the family. The 2016 Brussels attacks shake the neighborhood. In 2019, the children’s father dies. The following year, lockdown puts their daily lives to the test.
Despite her financial difficulties, Lamia then decides to resume training in carpentry, a project close to her heart. She continues to look after her children while worrying about the violence spreading in some Brussels neighborhoods.
The years go by. Mehdi develops a passion for working with children, Meissa works as a student at a nursing home, and Zaher receives a letter from the Belgian Ministry of Defence about a year of military service. Their mother gradually sees them become young adults making their own choices.
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For Lidewij Nuitten, these ten years have also changed the way she sees other people. In her interview, she says she discovered how much the experiences of this Moroccan-born family echoed those of other Belgian families. Their closeness turned a neighborly relationship into a true friendship.
Hundreds of hours of footage have become a three-part documentary series titled “We’ll All Go to Heaven.” It will air from this Tuesday, October 20, at 9:25 p.m. on VRT Canvas and will be available on VRT MAX. Filming wrapped up in summer 2026, when the youngest of the three children came of age.
