Discoveries from Belgium World Cinema

Finalists: Bert Schrijvers, Jeremy Baltii and Quinten Leon.

When Finn Jacob Leigh and Wesley Jane Miller try to perform with their band at school, all hell breaks loose when they get transported to another dimension where the evil dictator Glarfius is set on conquering all worlds.

Belgian artist Brecht Vanhoutte closes his eyes and sees. Busy Brussels men in suits, dancing silhouettes, strange plants, visions of blurred and dreamlike aesthetics, unreal universes. Dealing with his mental health, he reveals his inner world with an experimental journey using AI and textures that evoke times gone by, pages of an undated personal diary written with cadences of digital flow where the real and the fantastic rhyme.

At the end of November 2014, the Flemish music scene lost a Ghent icon. Singer, songwriter, and author Luc De Vos passed away unexpectedly. On Thursday, December 5, 2024, some 20 artists and bands paid tribute to him at the Lotto Arena in Antwerp. The lineup included ISE, Maria Iskariot, Emma Bale, BLUAI, Elisa Waut, Eden, Kids with Buns, ILA, Lady Linn, Emmy d'Arc, and Aafke Romeijn.

'Smaad' is this cop's very first full-length theater show. He leaves no sacred cow untouched.

For the past 20 years, every July 20th, on the eve of Belgium's national holiday, thousands of people have been gathering on the Place du Jeu de Balle in Brussels. This is the “Bal National”, a unique celebration halfway between festival, carnival and family reunion. The event brings together people from all walks of life, who together define the contours of a certain “belgitude”. Jeux de Bal takes you right to the heart of this joyous collective experience.

With Maurice D, an enigmatic silent film that could be situated somewhere between Luis Buñuel's Un Chien andalou and Alfred Hitchcock's La Loi du silence, another extremely rare auteur, Maurice Diament, is brought to light. The anxiety-inducing effect of his film was to be increased tenfold by the sound of the metronome that was supposed to accompany the screening.

Lost in his nightmares, Thierry the lighthouse keeper gloomily watches the jellyfish as they float past his window… It has been many years since his lighthouse sunk under the ocean. In her empty room, Lucie gazes at a picture of a faraway beach. Lucie falls asleep. Thierry sleeps fitfully. They are to meet on the beach of their dreams.

Looking back on the footage of a hijacking at the Dutch national news broadcast, back in 2015. Aidan Timmer, who now shares the age of the culprit, reflects on the incident. While watching the young man struggle to recite a letter on live television, Aidan gets emotionally closer to the boy who took his father hostage.

A Turkish man travels West. In search for his recently deceased sister. She looks at him through cracks in her wooden coffin, while he searches her to say farewell.

The object is the camera. Its description is the starting point for a reflection on the image – of oneself and of others – and on the time one has to lose in order to capture them.

Pubert Jimbob, a young man, enters a strange reality after getting lured away from his home by an enigmatic figure who throws him a lighter. Jimbob meets Nadine, a lump with a mouth, and helps her.

A group of journalists reporting on a crime in the Cité Modèle in Brussels have their camera stolen by a couple of girls.

The room 13 is the scene of a double murder. The man in room 14 didn't notice. Will he be next?

A hymn for women to reclaim the streets.

A film poem filmed at Antwerp Zoo echoes diasporic voices of displacement. The work is inspired by the writings of W.G. Sebald, who offered an alternative model of memory through intertextuality and a metonymical narrative technique.

The film follows Bruno Hellenbosch, who makes very large wood engravings and creates a universe where old and new, the beautiful and the trivial, Dürer's shadow and a Lidl logo come together.

More important than the Kastaars, sharper than Viktor Verhulst's jawline and louder than Fien Germijns. The First Avenger of media criticism finally comes back out of the ice to shout from behind his tub. It has been a scary world without Xander De Rycke. Flemish films are successful again, VRT's weatherman has retired and Niels Destadsbader has been replaced by someone who calls himself Meteor. Not to mention the channel that was hijacked by Gert and James, that singing competition in carnival costumes and Tom Waes complaining about history with our tax money on a potato patch. But not to worry, your best friend is back with the only year-end conference that matters.

While walking in the forest of his little kingdom, a little king sees an extraordinary being white as snow, fast as the wind and with a horn on his forehead. Unfortunately, the creature immediately disappears, and despite the help of the knight Petitpas, it remains nowhere to be found. Only the little queen, tender and gentle, will succeed in meeting the mythical animal and bringing it back to the little castle. The little king is delighted, the little queen takes care of her guest but, strangely, the unicorn spends his days and nights at the window.

Justine, Armel, Camille and Félix are four thirty-somethings who live in Brussels. Friends for years, they are beautiful, they have a situation, they are alive. But at thirty years old, even the smallest grain of sand can stop the machine. The same day Faustine is challenged in her work, Camille becomes pregnant, Armel loses his father and Félix is called to work in Tokyo. It's raining sand in Brussels.

Boris Lehman's funereal mask is constructed when he is alive (which therefore requires him to construct a rudimentary canal to breathe through the plaster).

Birthed from a personal experience and a poetic text written by the artist, the film dives into the feelings of loss, helplessness and overwhelm during the process of accepting the hurt inflicted by others. These emotional wounds are translated visually into a physical and pulsing presence that represents a dark and unsettling image of femininity.

Capra is an insurance salesman. One day, after an attack, he meets an unknown woman who came to his rescue. He picks her up hitchhiking and is convinced that this encounter was meant to be. He decides to follow her; even if he has to look death in the eyes to do so... From very close by...

Louise wants to prove to her dad that she is strong like a boy. François-Xavier wants to change his life as a noble subject to protocol. They meet. Everyone will progress towards their goal, together forming a most unlikely couple.

A man struggles with his faith and is perennially caught between ascension and fall. "Ascending Double Helix" explores the boundaries between the mythologized and the visceral body, blending sculpture with the sublime, and taking as its cue the motif of ascension and the format of the passion play.

A small giraffe has the chance to meet a high. Despite the obvious differences in height, the two discover a certain affinity … and a common love for ties!

A broken phone and the digital memory of a broken relationship. Both fragile, both recomposed to reveal the fragments of a first love that seems to fade away. Through the careful manipulation of discarnate metal components and the director's attentive look on a found intimate archive, a parallel movement of lingering and resistance to the ephemeral. A playful reflection on what remains.

Quirino, 77, has lived for more than 30 years in an abandoned village, at the bottom of a deep valley, between the sea and the mountains. Feeling the effects of old age, Quirino faces the dilemma of having to leave the only place he has ever known or end his days there.

The Poetic Self-Defense project presents 12 video poems by slammers from the feminist artists' collective L-SLAM. Under the direction of director Vinciane Zech, the slammers denounce discrimination linked to gender, LGBTQIA+ experiences, racism, disabilities, etc., and bring their powerful words to bear on individual self-repair and collective empowerment. This project is part of the "Tant qu'il le faudra" call for projects launched by the Secrétariat d'Etat à l'Égalité des genres, à l'Égalité des chances et à la Diversité, in collaboration with the Festival de Liège, the GSARA and the production company La démise en boîte.

Oratorio for 3 narrators, voices, choir, guitar, accordion, and orchestra Songs by Jacques Brel As part of the 7th International Guitar Festival Recorded at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Liège.

When Guillaume finds out he has a serious illness, he asks a film crew to make a documentary about his life in case he doesn't survive.

Documentary on the rich historical past of Belgium, concerning its processions and its carnivals.

Traditional manual and individual work vs. modern machine and mass production in the context of social development and quality of life.

After massive destruction the remaining residential areas are protected by huge walls with the destitute on one side and elites on the other with the latter trying to turn the people's anger into workforce.

Cyriel Buysse depicts the downfall of a small East Flanders farmer and his household, at the turn of the century, in a time commonly called la belle époque, which was only nice for the ruling upper crust of chateau lords and their friends.

An experimental movie about sustainability

Disadoption challenges the plurality of the mother and father in adoption and asks whether it is possible to cancel an adoption or 'disadopt'. The artist transforms the lyrics of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' learned by children in nursery school. The wonder of looking at the little star is converted into the surprise of a rumor told by the adoption agency.

A Korean adoptee writes a letter to her birth mother. She describes her feelings in her adoptive society. Visit: star~kim project (kimura byol lemoine)

What happens when a building is abandoned?

2022 has been an eventful year so far. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rising energy prices, and the spread of monkeypox. Fortunately, Kamal Kharmach has the necessary experience from his three previous end-of-year conferences to dissect a year like 2022 for us.

A multi-coloured and soaring sketch of a loving intimacy that deconstructs more than pornography.

French version of Cherubini's opera staged in Brussels by Krzysztof Warlikowski

The world went into lockdown and everything stood still. A few students share a house together. Life mostly takes place indoors, yet spring sneaks into their world.

The Minuscules accompanies the evolution of a civic struggle in Nicaragua, initiated by the peasants' movement against the construction of the Grand Interoceanic Canal that would cut the country in half at the feet of the volcano, through lakes, forests and farmland. In a reaction against multiple abuses of power, different social movements converge and, in April 2018, the insurrection explodes. This is the struggle of Elba, Doña Chica, Gaby, Elyla and many other "minuscules", from the edge of the trench to exile. What does resistance create?

József works at the largest still-operational grain silo in Budapest. He’s been doing this work for more than 30 years, and lives in a container home next to the structure, where trucks and trains rumble past his window. When he is lowered into the ten-story-deep silos to clean them, he looks like a scuba diver at work. These scenes are captured with stunning, contrast-rich camerawork, and ably edited with a strong sound design.