Two films at the Cannes film festival portray how the lack of jobs, money and social recognition in Europe can drive men to desperation. In "Colossal Youth", Portuguese director Pedro Costa tells the bleak tale of Cape Verdean worker Ventura, who lives on the outskirts of Lisbon and is forced to leave the apartment he had lived in for 34 years.
Director Lucas Belvaux describes the life of Belgium's working class in "The Right of the Weakest", which is also competing for the main "Palme d'Or" prize in Cannes.
Set in eastern Belgium, Patrick (Eric Caravaca) and his friends lose their jobs when their steel mill shuts down, meaning men who had considered themselves as the "aristocracy of the working class" suddenly find themselves unemployed.
Patrick now looks after his son, Steve, while his wife, Carole (Natacha Regnier), works in an industrial laundry. But when Carole's moped breaks down and Patrick cannot afford to buy her a new one, he struggles to live with the humiliation.
To find money for him, Patrick's friends Robert, Jean-Pierre and Marc, a convict on parole, decide to rob their old work place's scrap-metal dealer.
"If they sell my life off, the money's mine too," Robert says to justify the amateurishly planned hold-up that ends in a spectacular finish.
"I wanted to make the voices of the weakest heard, of those who are most in danger," Belvaux told reporters.
To add authenticity to his working class heroes, Belvaux shot images inside a laundry and beer factory while the machines kept running and the workers continued their routine.
"We had to take on the role and the speed of the workers. I think this helps to show what the hard reality of this tough job is," Belvaux said.
Regnier, who won Cannes' best actress prize for her performance in "The Dreamlife of Angels" in 1998, agreed.
"I was never quick enough," she said. Portugal's Costa said he wanted to show the real life of the Cape Verdean community in the suburbs of the Portuguese capital, using amateur actors. Costa said he had met Ventura, a solitary figure on the margins of a poor neighbourhood, while shooting his 1997 film "Ossos".
The film, shot without the use of lighting, cables, makeup, generators or catering, tells the tale of retired worker Ventura and the people in his neighbourhood, an illiterate man he is writing letters for and a sick, single mother.
"I wish I could give you a 100,000 cigarettes, a dozen of those fancy dresses, a car, the little lava house you've always wanted, a four-penny bouquet," Ventura repeats in a love letter to the wife who has left him.
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