Anybody There..?

A boy is chased out of a trailer. Just out of bed, he stands in his underpants looking groggily around him. "Don't you understand?" Wim Keyl asks him. The boy nods. He understands all too well. Wim Keyl and Jan Geyteman have been running the farm they are on for the last 20 years. The boys who come here have been identified as troubled and have received permission to work here. They get no second warnings. If they cross the line, they get kicked out and that's that. The tough, unorthodox approach employed by these two robust men who have neither qualifications nor outside funding seems to be successful among the boys who have come here to do their community service. They get a trailer to stay in, hard physical labor, training in Japanese martial arts, and plenty of rules and discipline. The camera follows life on the farm in general and zooms in on various boys in particular. One of them is the rabidly nationalistic Jesse. Like the others, he quickly loses his swaggering bluster and is forced to face himself on all fronts. "There's always so much going on inside me," he says. Even though Wim and Jan's approach is successful, the farm's continued existence is threatened by governmental regulations, including the requirement that all institutions working with young people have to be certified within two years.