Discoveries from Belgium World Cinema

The film is set in a world where androids have replaced humans for menial tasks, leading unskilled humans to pretend to be robots in order to get a job.

Nola tells the harrowing story of sisters Nola (9) and Liza (15), who grow up in a household scarred by neglect, poverty and domestic violence. Their mother Gina struggles with a drinking problem and constantly oversteps her role as a parent. Despite the hopeless situation, the girls seek solace in small, tender moments together. Liza assumes the role of care figure, but their attempts to maintain some normality are undermined each time. When the situation escalates, child protection intervenes. Nola is a poignant and moving short film about how important it is for a child to be able to grow up in a loving, safe environment. Through the eyes of two children, the film takes a confrontational look at a reality where parental care is lacking and children have to grow up too early. Nola emphasises the need for warmth, stability and protection in a child's formative years.

Night falls somewhere on earth. Here and there, egg-shaped objects cross the sky and crash to the ground. Shortly afterwards, empty seats and fishing rods stuck in the grass are found. Everything becomes strangely quiet.

Shots of a woman putting on lipstick and laying in the bath are overlaid upon each other.

Remsk and Sarah are a neurotic, passionate couple. He is a struggling writer who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. She is a mentally unstable, weed-addicted, sexual woman. Bill is a blown-up ego, constantly showing off the success of his acting career. Nicky is constantly sucking up to her husband. A month ago, at a party in Antwerp, Remsk was so drunk that he invited Bill and Nicky to come along on their vacation in the Provence where Remsk's father owns a villa. Remsk assumes that they would never come over anyway. Then what must not happen happens. Bill calls Remsk to say that he is on his way to France...

Two best friends, unemployed and with time to kill. They meet up in Antwerp where they decide to each walk an opposite direction and follow the Belgian border until they meet up with a bag full of stories.

Babyroussa awakes on his island hungry, but the fridge is empty. He decides to bake some bread.

A cinematic journey behind the scenes of a dream reimagining the story of Pegasus, the winged horse from Greek mythology, through a mischievously captivating tale divided into six acts.

Tanguy, Christelle and Cathy are Korean by origin. They were adopted by Belgian families in the 1970s. Thirty years later, an exceptional event brings them back together to the country where they were born. How will each of them experience this return to their roots?

Mental anguish is all that's present in the film Seuls / Alone (1989). Shot like a grungy medical documentary, Smolders and co-director Thierry Knauff intercut shots of several children at a Belgium psychiatric clinic. The kids are shown with forlorn expressions, twicthing their eyes, sometimes smiling, shaking, jumping, rocking their heads side to side, or smacking their heads with horrific glee against walls. It's a minimalist work that captures the intense monotony of lost and disturbed young minds, and maintains a gritty intensity.

Investigation by the Museum of Walloon Life showing the different stages of the manufacture of rifle barrels using the so-called "Damascus" process, in Nessonvaux in 1925 and 1931

Chlorophylle and Minimum are about to savor a well-deserved vacation. Surprised by a storm, they take refuge in a grove. However, this grove is peculiar. Unbeknownst to them, they have entered a haunted grove.

What to do with the ashes in the cocoa can, the remains of someone who has neither an urn nor any living relatives? The mortician, Serge, is a lonely man who leads a monotonous and joyless existence — and the only person attending the funeral happens to be his ex-wife. Serge has also had to look after their daughter, Inès, at short notice. His attempt to give the deceased stranger a dignified funeral creates an opportunity to repair his relationship with Inès.

This film is an homage to the Gaza Strip and to the possibility of hope beyond hopelessness. Ouroboros, the symbol of the snake eating its tail, is both end and beginning: death as regeneration. A 74-minute experimental narrative film that turns the destruction of Gaza into a story of heartbreak, Ouroboros asks what it means to be human when humanity has failed. Taking the form of a love story, the film's central character is Diego Marcon, a man who embarks on a circular journey to shed his pain only to experience it, again and again. In the course of a single day, his travel fuses together Native American territories, the ancient Italian city of Matera, a castle in Brittany, and the ruins of the Gaza Strip into a single landscape.

01 People = Shit 02 (sic) 03 Get This 04 Unsainted 05 Disasterpiece 06 Before I Forget 07 The Heretic Anthem 08 Psychosocial 09 The Devil in I 10 Prosthetics 11 Vermilion 12 Custer 13 Sulfur 14 All Out Life 15 Duality 16 Spit It Out 17 Surfacing

An ordinary man appears to be breeding flies in his apartment. He seems to be very fond of them. But appearances are deceptive.

A medium-length musical film.

In a secluded forest house, a traumatized woman drifts between reality and a surreal limbo that embodies her trauma world, as her fragmented identity battles to reclaim control over her life and face the darkness threatening to engulf her.

Live Graspop Metal Meeting (2022)

This is the story of a land where the sun never shines. Olga, a young singer, escapes the fog of the city to rediscover her faith and keep on singing.

A documentary celebrating 25 years of flemish subsidised cinema.

One summer, divers locate hidden weapons dating back to WWII in a lake. Louison's grandmother is said to be involved. Along with other comrades, she allegedly refused to surrender her weapons.

A restless young man roves in the gay hotspots of a metropolis. Anonymous places dressed in mirrors, intense colors and kitschy decors are the landscape for this stranger in search of comfort, connection and himself.

Summertime. Sam and Adele are on a beach holiday in Portugal. When Sam locks eyes with Miguel, the attraction between them throws Sam, Adele, Miguel, and his friend Santiago into a new configuration. The shelter of the woods and the dynamism of the sea lead into a night of secrets and revelations.

Kamal Kharmach is responsible for the year-end conference for the third time. Sit down for a witty, sharp and hilarious look back at 2021.

Several young men and women arrive one after the other at Hôtel des Acacias, full of hope, desire and vitality. In the bustle of this hotel, everyone is looking for love. Hôtel des Acacias was an exercise guided in 1982 by Chantal Akerman at Belgium’s INSAS audio-visual college.

After being attacked in a subway late at night, young artist Iris relives the past few weeks of her life as she pieces together events that led her to the encounter. Her violent father’s abuse of her mother builds tension in their home, and she flees the hostility to new friends in Alice and Vincent. She develops unexpected feelings towards Alice, but family tragedy soon throws her entire world into question.

In the airport of Brussels, the future lawyer Michael says farewell to his parents. While in the toilet, he glances a mysterious woman, Angelica, who asks for help to him while she is being arrested by the immigration department. Michael becomes obsessed with Angelica and finds her in a peep show. He marries her to give Belgium citizenship to her and after a short time, he realizes that she is a member of a resistance of an undefined country in South America.

Snail racing is a game of unequal chances, especially when your snails are not trained champions, but randomly plucked off a wall; individual temperaments and moods count as in any sport. They are supposed to radiate out towards a circular finishing line, but one mollusc is stubbornly introverted, while another may be heartsick: its sponsor speculates that “it needs love, it hasn’t eaten much.” Several think it’s more fun to climb over each other. Little girls’ nails echo the bright blobs of paint on shells. The children’s choral twittering resolves into “Allez! Allez!” It’s a photo finish. Suddenly rain sheets down and the kids stampede, almost causing a tragedy. The racing colors wash off like smoke glowing in water.

Rashid, a Syrian theater director and political refugee, is working with other refugees on a performance. During a retreat at a beach house with his secret lover Adrian, tensions rise. The strain of their relationship weighs not only on Rashid’s real life but also on their play.

Jan Jaap van der Wal has been an official resident of our country since 2022. Unfortunately, the 2024 elections come just a little too soon for him to be allowed to vote officially. But that doesn’t mean he can’t give unsolicited voting advice. That’s why, in the run-up to the elections in June, he is presenting a true election comedy show titled: ‘GEEN STEM’.

Comedy about an egg that refuses to be eaten and escapes from breakfast, to return to its mother.

A murder is committed in the building where Aurélia Maudru, inspector of the judicial police in charge of the investigation, lives.

A tribute to Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (1889-1952) who commanded the French First Army which he led from Provence to the Rhine and the Danube. Later, from 1950 to 1951, he became the high commissioner and the commander-in-chief of Indochina where he once again proved heroic by defeating General Giap three times on the run. But cancer forced him to return to Paris where he died some time later. De Lattre de Tassigny was posthumously made Maréchal de France.

The princesses of Prinsessia have been invited to perform the opening dance at the annual ball of Prinsendaal. This is a great honor, as Prinsendaal is the oldest and most important princess school in the country. Teacher Flora urges the princesses to behave properly and orderly. After all, she wants Prinsessia to make a good impression. That won't be easy, because the director of Prinsendaal wants nothing less than a perfect opening dance. The only thing that matters to him is order and discipline. A stark contrast to the colorful, playful princesses Violet, Roos, Madeliefje, Iris, and Linde.

The Smurfs, tiny blue people living in a village of big forest mushrooms, have assorted adventures in this theatrical compilation of five "Smurfs" TV cartoon shorts adapted from Peyo's famous comic-book.

When a bourgeois couple needs to park their expensive car in an Arab neighbourhood, an inevitable misunderstanding with the locals turns into paralyzing panic.

Is it possible, when you come from a family of Maghreb immigrants and you are a girl or a woman, to invent your life, to choose to leave the traditional universe, to break up with your family, without renouncing that which bases you, to the recognition of your own? Four portraits of women bear witness to a generation that lives its life through its own choices. Their mothers were illiterate but dreamed of a university education for their daughters. They invested their children with their hopes, but also with their lacks, their solitudes.

The curators invited a group of artists to be inspired by the work of the well-known, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman. They specifically presented them News from Home, the 1976 feature film with two equal main characters: the island of Manhattan, New York where the director resides and her mother in Brussels who, through a stream of letters, demands increasingly urgent news.

The city of Douala is in trepidation for the start of the new school year. A long line of customers come to Mambar Pierrette, the neighbourhood dressmaker, to have their clothes ready for imminent social events and ceremonies. More than just a sewer, Pierrette becomes the confidant of her customers, of a generation. But when the rain starts pouring down and threaten to flood her workshop – one of several successive misfortunes – Pierrette will have to stay afloat.

12-year old Anton is spending his summer holidays at Kaskad military training camp, where he and 60 other Russian children are subjected to tough exercise regimens created by President Putin for the fight against Muslim Chechens.

Romanos bar is the only café in the town of Aboadela: a small place in a valley in the North of Portugal. Here a group of young men spend most of their time - playing cards and talking shit. Some seem to search for a way out of the town, while others have accepted that it is what it is.

Hugo, 34, an educator at the boarding school, finds is daily life disrupted by Jules, a provocative teenager.

A group of 10 influencers participate in a brand new reality show. The show, which takes place deep in the forest, does not seem as innocent as it seems. Numerous bizarre situations occur during the program. When a masked killer suddenly shows up, the show turns into a cat-and-mouse game between the influencers and the killer. Can they escape?

Cleo seeks refuge from a hostile school environment in a glitter ball fantasy make believe world... and the boys toilets. Little does she know that someone else is hiding there too.

Follow Rosamund, a struggling jazz singer, on her road to stardom when she gets the chance of a lifetime that few can turn down. But when the truth behind all the glamor comes to light, things go downhill.

The short film for the eponymous EP.

The district of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean in Brussels has become world-famous as a center of jihadism, but for six-year-old Aatos and his friend Amine, it is a familiar home. Here, they listen to spiders, discover black holes, and fight about what is going to steer a flying carpet. Together they search for the answers to life's big questions. But the brutality of the adult world makes itself known when terrorists detonate a bomb in the neighborhood. Aaatos envies Amine's Muslim faith and looks for his own gods, although his classmate Flo questions him; she is strongly convinced that anyone who believes in God is completely nuts. Gods of Molenbeek is a wonderful portrayal of childhood friendship, inquiry and the creation of meaning in a chaotic time.

Winter is approaching, and the last day of the red-yellow-brown glow of autumn is a good time for the animals in the forest to organize a very special race. Ardently they construct buggies from discarded materials, and as the weather turns frosty, the race is on for the hare, fox, hedgehog, bear, and others. With mutual caring, the forest animals ride toward the finish line and their wintering grounds.

Five rather frivolous musicians seize the opportunity to perform on a cruise in the Mediterranean. Alas: they are under contract to engage a female singer - and they fear to fall in love with her, which would endanger their friendship.

The first movie version, from the age of black & white, of Flemish (heimat-)author Ernest Claes' classical novel, titled after the nickname (Dutch 'the White', referring to a blond male) of the main character: a smart but naughty farmhand's son whose eternal mischief, pranks and disobedience drive his elders (especially teachers, family and father's grumpy employer, a rich farmer) and classmates to despair in a time when a boy's punishment was still inevitable, swift and often severe.

Cecilio, a drug addict and dealer, struggles to escape the grip of addiction while living as a squatter in Lisbon. Determined to rebuild his life, he takes on a new job, but the harsh realities of the system and his own inner battles threaten to pull him back to the fringes of society. As he confronts his darkest truths, Cecilio embarks on a journey of resilience, uncovering unexpected dignity and solidarity along the way.

‘Keczupowo’ is a fictional kind of fever dream re-imagination, based upon memories and connections of Natalia’s place of birth, ‘Włocławek’ Poland. She grew up in Belgium but has spent a lot of times visiting the city together with family. The film is a representation of her double-sided feeling every time she visits the place, which is nostalgic sentiment on the one hand, and alienation, eeriness or loneliness on the other. ‘Keczupowo’ is Polish for ‘Ketchuptown’.