Discoveries from Belgium World Cinema

One night, Mara is cleaning an art gallery where she dreams of being exhibited. A power outage will force her to explore and discover the filthiest corners of this enclosure...

“Imagine this camera is your mother”, a father tells his daughter. In the 1990s, scores of families from the Republic of Moldova began a ritualised mail exchange between the mothers, who had emigrated for economic reasons, and their relatives back home. The former sent money and goods; the latter sent videotapes. These amateur recordings are the material of this film. They testify to the painful gaps the absent persons left in the lives of those who stayed behind.

Wonder Africa was commissioned by Union Minière du Haut Katanga, Forminière, and BCK to mark their 50th anniversary. The film highlights the transformation of Katanga and Kasai under the influence of the mining industry. Through the idyllic and somewhat naïve romance of two locals, audiences are taken on a tour of the mining hub, showcasing its workshops, schools, hospitals, sports grounds, and more, all framed in a celebratory and almost storybook-like vision of progress. The documentary was released in Dutch and French.

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.

Fei dreams back to her childhood in the great outdoors with her grandfather and horse. Unexpectedly, her pendant given to her by her grandfather is stolen by an unknown kung fu master. Fei questions the real meaning behind the pendant.

Lia, a Belgian-Rwandan basketball player facing the twilight of her career. Twenty years after fleeing the genocide, she is asked to join the Rwandan national basketball team. This journey stirs buried memories of a painful past: exile, family silences and the pain of a fractured identity. Through her eyes, the film explores confrontation between memory and the present, and a nation scarred by tragedy with a contemporary Rwanda brimming with life and creativity.

Ferdinand rents a cellar for 200 euros a month. But that’s still too much. The arrival of the Olympic Games in Paris makes him dream big, but he only gets a temporary job at the Stade de France and gets swallowed up by the noise and fury of the Games. At night, Ferdinand learns to write songs with his best friend Juliette and turns his cramped cellar into a place of comfort.

While non-binary representations are rare, Lou talks about their relationship to gender, clothes, and other markers.

Charles Dekeukeleire, then a questioning Catholic, was spurred into making this documentary on a pilgrimage with the Catholic Young Workers’ Movement. The director’s approach is one of critical reflection; A film emotional and fervent, even acerbic.

Three portraits of women of different ages, in the same house, asking themselves questions about social games, education, beauty, love and life. The women do not cross each other, but succeed each other as three edges of the same life.

'"Weleer/Once" tells the the rise and fall of an entire cardboard society. It's about construction from scratch, nostalgia for 'village life' and the intrigues between villagers during a time of crisis. After a man wakes up in an entirely empty world, he soon finds a piece of cardboard. Gradually the man starts to build his cardboard village, looking for the ideal society. When more villagers start to appear, the empty world gets a civilized character. After days of hard labor the cardboard village finally is ready. The villagers gather and soon a big party is organized. Although most people are satisfied and enjoy their life in this new environment, you can still feel the darkness overshadowing the peaceful village... . When more and more economic problems rise, the existence of the village is at stake.

A slice of life story about a Christmas Eve. In the nineties. At the household of a West-Flemish family. Spoken in West-Flemish. Comical. But tragic if you ask the narrator.

Anémone is a modern siren. Every night, she sings in a bar, seduces a man, brings him home, and kills him. Her roommates share the same routine and project: get rid of all men on Earth by killing them one after the other.

Crippled as a young girl, Sabine vows to become a nun if cured. But when it turns out the original diagnosis was faulty and she regains the use of her legs, she decides to marry instead. Wreaked with guild when her first child is stillborn, Sabine enters a monastery where her sister Gertrude also resides. But after her sister dies of an illness, Sabine leaves the nuns behind and travels to India seeking peace.

Belgian opera film of Wagner's opera.

After the sudden disappearance of her partner one summer in Corsica, Lou Colpé returns to Charleroi. Their home, a place where the absence is tangible, is transformed into a sanctuary. Everything there becomes a treasure and a ritual. She films what is reinvented every day: her survival.

Short documentary on 3 fisherman who still go fishing near the shore with horses the old fashioned way.

Going through the town searching for her mother’s buried books, Kimia tries to tackle the fear she has inherited from her mother. In this journey, she needs to find herself through the mirrors of others.

After yet another painful rejection, a young man takes to the road. With no clear destination, he drives through the night, the hum of the engine drowning out the echo of disappointment. His journey seems directionless until he encounters a sick crooner stranded by the roadside.

Meet six women of power: scientific researchers, technological leaders, mathematical or engineering geniuses. In this film, they reveal themselves: they share their journey, showcase their groundbreaking work and reveal the obstacles they have overcome as girls and women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In celebrating these contemporary pioneers, we are also highlighting a dark truth. Throughout history, women scientists have been silenced, their contributions relegated to the shadows. Will this generation rewrite the rules and create a new legacy?

A struggling middle-aged bus driver, trapped in the monotony of his routine, is faced with an alternative that could finally change everything.

At her sister's funeral, a young woman is distracted by a something from the woods.

After the Nazi's had invaded Belgium in 1940, they started experimenting on Jews. Little did they know what consequences one of their experiments would have.

In a retirement home in a small village in the south of France, residents try to build a community. What ties can they still manage to forge in this anonymous environment often perceived as hostile?

This year, King will celebrate Christmas with the most hospitable of his subjects, whoever that might be. Mouse hopes King will choose her, so she starts to make the cave as cosy as possible, but that just causes a disagreement with the overprotective Dragon. The pair even fight at the Christmas market, and go their separate ways. Mouse hangs out with the foul-mouthed Brother, while an unfortunate spell renders Dragon invisible and inaudible. Which makes a reconciliation difficult, of course.

Romp through a world full of Rube Goldberg devices, then to a jungle trek, then to paradise...

A dysfunctional family documents their discovery of an ancient Egyptian mummy on film. This trashy home movie soon merges with a sunday-afternoon tv-documentary and questions cinema, and the search for immortality throughout the ages.

Ron is an astronaut living in Belgium, his girlfriend Lisa still lives in China. Set against the backdrop of the university riots in Hong Kong, The Astronaut shows a long distance relationship being put to the test.

This film raises an important question for us, the parents of different children: how do we bid farewell to someone while the situation forces us into a hand-tohand fight? If a baby kangaroo leaves his pouch at a certain moment, the handicapped child stays longer in the lap of his/her mother. Then the stake is, when does one dare to gently push him/her out? For his/her part, the child also has to prove to the mother that (s)he can become independent.

Propaganda film about Belgian pilots in the RAF during World War II and the creation of the entirely Belgian 350 Squadron in 1941.

It's sports day and a seventeen-year-old boy prepares to compete, as he has many times before. Only this time it's different, his childhood is behind him, different feelings, emotions and desires engulf him as he watches his classmates. His life is about to change.

Two fathers struggle to find a way to cohabit with their possessed daughter. Every night, the same thing happens over and over. Giles and Sean's daughter runs around their flat, screaming, scratching walls - possessed by a demon. They're terrified of their own daughter and don't know what to do about it.

ln late 1800s Europe, Oscar, a wealthy but lonely middle-aged man who has lived a decadent, extravagant life in a chateau filled with wine, courtesans and opium, confesses his love to his gardener Jude before he dies of his excesses.

The castle must be positioned just far enough from the sea to be completed before the tide reaches it. As the moat is dug by busy spades, the vacated sand forms a growing pile in the middle. Sea water starts to rise into the moat from below. As the waves break gently, closer and closer, the children dig faster to fortify the outer rampart with sodden sand. Even as the defences are being flooded, they work on shaping and firming the castle with hands and feet. The tide soon overwhelms the mini world and smooths the whole thing flat, leaving the children standing ankle-deep in ebb and flow.

Cycling on one wheel, three friends prepare for a new phase of life: the transition to high school.

One summer day in the kitchen of a restaurant. 3 religions and 4 nationalities working together. The boss cannot pay his suppliers and employees, not even the gas. It's hot, the crew is tired. Economic crisis crystallized in a 15m2 kitchen.

Mary-Jo receives daily visitors in her living room. An ethnologist specialized in Darfur, her guests aren't coming to have tea only. They need crucial help that only this 90-year-old woman can give.

Maxime Jean-Baptiste continues the research he started in "Nou Voix" (2018) concerning colonial memory, the Guyanese diaspora, and the staging of Black bodies. By questioning how “official” narratives are constructed, the film "Moune Ô" encourages a shift in perspective regarding the link between colonisation and extractivism.

Manon de Boer films the dancer Cynthia Loemij, who improvises to Eugène Ysaÿe’s 3 Sonates for Violin Solo.

When an interrogation goes wrong, Frank uncovers more than he would like to know.

The castle must be positioned just far enough from the sea to be completed before the tide reaches it. As the moat is dug by busy spades, the vacated sand forms a growing pile in the middle. Sea water starts to rise into the moat from below. As the waves break gently, closer and closer, the children dig faster to fortify the outer rampart with sodden sand. Even as the defences are being flooded, they work on shaping and firming the castle with hands and feet. The tide soon overwhelms the mini world and smooths the whole thing flat, leaving the children standing ankle-deep in ebb and flow.

Otro Sol is a group of real and invented characters trapped in a film. It is also a purgatory of retired thieves that takes place on the coast of the Atacama Desert. The film is circular and seeks to invent and verify the myth of Alberto Cándia, a Chilean international thief who stole the Cathedral of Cadiz in Andalucia in the late 1980s.

After their latest video goes viral, four friends head to a luxury resort in the Ardennes to celebrate. But their new fame may affect their friendship.

Piet Piraat hopes to join the Brave Pirate Club. To do so, he must complete three assignments. The last to do of these assignments is to defeat a sea monster. The Scheve Schuit sets course for the port town of Comino, where they will try to free the townspeople from the threat of the so called sea monster...

Indonesia struggles with high poverty rates and discrimination against minority groups. Ronny P. former actor and activist, organizes tours for the rich to meet the poor, and provides shelter to foreigners, LGBT, the sick and disabled. He seeks investors for his dream movie "Memories for The Future" to let the world know the real history and tragedy of Indonesia. Others say he is a charlatan, a man in deep debt exploiting everything that crosses his path. Somewhere few and far between lies the truth. "The making of Memories for the Future" is a reflection on social ethics in Indonesia, set in an a-typical middle class household on the edge of falling into despair and poverty.

In Boekentoren, Robbrecht Desmet also explores a single room, in this case by using the 360° shot, a so-called anti-cinematographic gesture that goes against the spatial logic of classical cinema, but that just like the zoom is an embodiment of the curious device of simultaneous inscription and erasure. The film portrays the belvédère of the Boekentoren, Ghent’s university library, built by Flemish modernist Henry Van De Velde. In a continuous panoramic shot, taken from the centre of the interior, the camera scans both the modernist wooden pillars as the stark windows framing the city skyline and Ghent’s historic towers.

The daughters of Pandora on a special mission ...

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’.

"When the shamans stop dancing and life in the rainforest loses its balance, the sky will collapse and come to crush everything." This wisdom is passed down from generation to generation by the Yanomami of Brazil. But gold miners are polluting the rivers, shamans are dying, the rainforest is disappearing and the earth is getting hotter. Davi Kopenawa, a tribal leader and spokesman for the Yanomami, has been fighting relentlessly against the colonization of his land for 40 years. He warns Westerners that when the sky collapses, they too will be crushed. Why don't they listen? Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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.

Nathalie, a student at the Sorbonne, becomes a model and lover of a painter until the artist transmits a venereal disease to her.

Bruno is a sensitive and impulsive young man of 24. He dreams of a career as a cellist, but has a job as a supply clerk at a bookstore. He is trying to get over an unhappy love affair and feels lonely. When he falls in love with a new girl and things don't work out, Bruno blows his top. He attempts suicide, but is eventually saved. Although the film treats the theme of suicide attempts by young people, it is first and foremost about how difficult it is to handle emotions such as love, solitude, disappointment and friendship... It's about the search for one's own place in a metropolis.