ZOLANG WE NOG KUNNEN (As long as we can) film by PHILIPPE NICLAES

with the support of VAF Filmfonds & VRT Canvas

The three shops that we follow in this documentary are the last of their kind in the village. Villages such as Koolkerke or Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Tielt used to have six grocery stores, but today there is one. A drugstore like my mother's is threatened with extinction. They all continue to do so, for their regular customers and especially for themselves. From a kind of pride and a tribute to their parents or grandparents who once started it. Somehow it is also a fight against loneliness. We see the same picture in the three shops: they are all 70+ people who know nothing about it and who try to maintain social contacts within the village.