Discoveries from Belgium World Cinema

Skin Pleasure is a video essay that investigates the different functions of the skin in relation to the reception of internet pornography. Juxtaposing found footage - like amateur porn, ASMR videos and other web-based body genres - with close-ups of the filmmakers' body, Skin Pleasure is a highly reflective and at the same time deeply personal exploration of our bodily engagement with online media.

It’s been twenty years since the G8 Summit held in Genoa in 2001 was marred by violence. There are two generations who went through that experience, in one way or another, and twenty years later they cannot consider the case closed. The dream behind the protests at Genoa 2001 is still alive: the issues then addressed are today’s issues, only more urgent. And the violence of Genoa 2001 is not over, since although that violence has been recounted many times, from different sides, and celebrated or condemned, it has never been understood or resolved.

Adaptation of the novel of the same name by Mathieu Robin.

At rush hour, a fruit crowd throng into the metro to the frantic rhythm of the music. The metro stops abruptly and the fruits renounce their eagerness gradually, they begin to fall asleep and dream of a world where they grow on trees. But the metro reboots suddenly and they return to the harsh reality: the terminus.

Becoming Plant follows six dancers who participate in a therapeutic group experiment with psychedelics, while temporarily ‘living’ together on the demilitarised industrial site. While they are subjected to the plant’s consciousness and to each other’s presence, they perform a choreography, aligning their naked bodies with each other and with the architectural ruins. The film serves as a catalyst to discuss wider social and relational issues such as science, spirituality, psychiatry, healing, healthcare and the problems of collective depression and trauma resulting from living in the age of Late Capitalism. Becoming Plant features a specially composed soundtrack by London based electronic musician and visual artist Gaika.

'The Air in My Throat' shows a summer day in the life of Elle (12), but what has taken place in the previous months, shimmers through the house. Something is wrong with the family, but they just keep on living, without talking about it. Meanwhile Elle tries killing time. It's summer. It's hot. There is nothing to do. She wanders around the house, discovering clothes from her mother, molesting barbies and spying on the neighbors. In the meantime, the reality slowly seeps inside the house. The unsaid is like a veil on the family and it is the basis of the sorrow that Elle struggles with.

Sections of one day showing the complications of a relationship between a mother and her daughter. It explores the fine lines of an intense relationship built on a pain that has never been confronted.

Life could be so sweet for Gus Vermeulen and Achille Mironval. They are partners in a cheese trade and business is good. So what they plan to do is to marry their two children so as to perpetuate this blissful situation. However two annoying facts cast a shadow over their happiness. Jean-Pierre Mironval, Achille's son, won't hear of anything connected with cheese and would rather be a jazz band leader and Gus, with his passion for spiritism, sows the seeds of discord between the two men. But all is well that ends well.

A young man lives and works in an abandoned bunker in a deserted post-Soviet interzone of industrial ruin. When he's not drinking, bailing floodwater or making techno beats, he's playing a video game that eerily mirrors his post-apocalyptic surroundings—hovering UFO included. Shown in complete isolation, he is the hero, the shooter and the zombie of his own moody game.

Between the dazzling first shot—burning debris falling from a satellite entering the atmosphere—and the final sequence merging underwater images with others generated by a specially created camera, a path is sketched out which, in the manner of a reverse science-fiction journey, leads from space exploration to a cemetery in the middle of the ocean.

A procession of stripes, squares, flippers, a picnic blanket, vacationers, a giant woman on a train, a bathtub, a piñata, cranes, a frying egg, a wedding cake, a coral snake and a parachute that goes on and on.

Belgian comedian Xander De Rycke presents his best material from his 15-year long career in one of Flanders largest stadiums the Lotto Arena.

Sonata is the story of a young pianist who performs a passionate sonata on a black grand piano. The spectator is transported into his imaginary world.

Aya, 10 years old, has just suddenly lost the love of her life: her older brother. She tries to survive by clinging to what she can: her older brother's group of friends with whom she shares the pain of mourning and who remind her of the one she has lost. "Okht Elmarhoum" is a closed-door film that takes place in the bedroom of the deceased, the day after his death, where sadness, solidarity and tenderness are shared between 7 young men and a little girl.

Soð is an Icelandic cooking show but this episode is different: It started when artist Christopher Tym asked Kristinn Guðmundsson (the show’s creator) if he could guest direct an episode of the show, but after the first draft went very wrong, the final result ended up becoming a bizarre self-reflexive film about friendship, cooking and film-making. It was funded by an Icelandic television channel but was eventually cut from the programming due to it’s ‘unconventional’ form.

Paola is the most secretive queen in the history of the kingdom. Adored at her marriage then hated because of her overly obvious refusal of the ceremonial function, Paola is an enigmatic queen who decided to lead her life "almost" as she saw fit. She confides in this documentary

The walls of a prison. The voices and cries of the prisoners escape from the litany of days.

A curator in a museum meets a woman he knows from a centuries old painting.

The hilarious end-of-year show by Bert Gabriëls from 2020.

In a ghost town as if from the past, the night is suspended. The dream world unfolds and reveals mysterious and poetic characters. In this futuristic city where the sun never rises, revolt is at hand.

On top of a hill, a giant listens to the everyday thoughts and conversations of the other people. However, the loneliness and multiplicity of the voices gradually become too much for the giant.

A diaristic work told in episodes, ‘Every Film’ traces the various homes the filmmaker comes across or concocts - both tangible and intangible in his two years as a student in Ghent, Belgium. In that brief duration of time which coincided with the global pandemic, he had to move between three completely different housing setups - a subletting situation, the cheapest AirBnB in town and eventually a student house. As much as the film is an intimate glimpse of the filmmaker`s encounters with various people, places and memories while away from home, it also becomes a fleeting document of the various quirks of cohabitation in Belgium when looked at from an outsider’s point of view.

The Democratic Republic of Congo could feed almost 1 in 2 people on Earth. Yet one in six Congolese people suffer from hunger. Yet one in two Congolese suffers from moderate acute malnutrition. Yet agriculture accounts for 70% of the population there. Faced with this paradox, the peasants regroup in agricultural cooperatives. A handful of them share their daily lives with us, that of all those they represent. Even if they don't know each other, live thousands of hundreds of kilometers from each other, participate in different agricultural sectors, their voices resonate in this powerful, sensitive and sincere documentary.

A documentation of Marcel Broodthaers's exhibition Le Corbeau et le Renard at the Wide White Space Gallery, Antwerp.

A Hungarian oral storyteller, and a Lebanese filmmaker—arriving in Budapest from a different era. Each bringing their own stories and entrusting their words to one another rather rhythmically, they weave a layered visual story.

Two bodies, giants almost naked, advance slowly to a circle of clay.

A French girl has just moved to a country called Dutchgaria, but she is struggling with the strange language and trying to understand the locals.

What happens when your land is being claimed as event zone for the two biggest sport events of the planet? A question that applies to the multi-ethnic urban Indigenous community of Aldeia Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as they face increased pressure ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. The Indigenous group lives right next to the sport stadium that stages the finals of both sport events. They wish to maintain their land as an Indigenous meeting place, like it has been since the early 20th century, but that does not correspond with the plans of the Brazilian authorities and the corporations coming with the sport events. From within the Indigenous settlement, the film explores how the arrival of the sport events is being experienced, how the pressure rises and how the community resists.

Flower of a Thousand Colours shows an intimate slice of the life of Emiliana, a loving mother who struggles every day with her rough environment-a Bolivian mining camp.

Short animation film.

A lion hunt filmed in 1908 by the aristocrat Hyacinthe Octavie Frédérique Louise Irénée Rolande Pirmez. This is the oldest known film to be shot in Ethopia.

She asked me where I was from. So I told her about a place far away from here. And about how we had to leave. Personal film about being (the child of) refugees in a digital age.

Synopsis: When four messengers from Rome are sent to a plague-stricken Caldonia with a message of peace and help to the king, they are accidentally lost, so Rome has no choice but to send ten of their best to find They don't have…

Four sketches from the European nightlife: an acrobat is helping out his wife in the kitchen, a Spanish dance, a love story of two brushes, a women is looking for the right clothes.

A young woman appears floating in the ocean.From this image the director takes you through a personal archive in an attempt to reinvigorate the vague memory of their mother. Of tales and dreams, memories are made.

A film on the gestures of work, those of a sculptor, a designer, a composer and dancers. A sketch of their relationship to the world subjected to the double gaze of fiction and documentary.

Aphasia is an unsettling inquiry into the representation of violence and the violence of representation. This documentary gesture explores how collective crimes keep being repeated and reflects on social and political constellations, unfolding constructions behind nation-states and national identities.

Comedy about a clumsy female intern conducting her first survey about smoking and smokers. Both flattered and impressed, she meets a few major artistic figures such as Serge Gainsbourg or Bernard Lavilliers. But the film is also about the cigarettes which helped to make Humphrey Bogart, James Dean - and several others - immortal myths. And about the cigarettes and cigars of ordinary people which fill restaurants and other public places with their heavy smoke.

As the sun rises above a forgotten pyramid, Mahmoud saddles his horse Asefa besides a desert race track. This is how they prepare for their daily training. Friday, all eyes will be on them. Mahmoud senses the fear inside him. Will he be able to win the race one more time?

La Fontaine turns filmmaker is a new film from The Cinema Owl. You will remember how last year, Wake Up and Dream Again invited children from 3 to 8 years old to discover some wonderful stories halfway between the world of dreams and the real world! This time The Cinema Owl has brought back from her travels six short films in the form of fables about animals, each with a strong message. La Fontaine turns filmmaker, in the tradition of our cartoon favourites, is both educational and a lot of laughs.

A young Belgian of Maroccan decent identifies himself with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Having lost his physician's license, Dr. Louis Krantz joins a gang of hoods to treat their wounded. When his son falls ill and needs expensive medical help, Louis decides to participate in a hold-up with the gang. Unfortunately for them, the robbery goes wrong. The gang boss, persuaded that Louis has betrayed them, decides to gun him down.

Under the pretext of making portraits of passers-by, the director checks upon the situation in Iran on the eve of the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. The film portrays a society before, during and after the elections, a short dream period in which a change becomes tangible.

Documentary about the war in South Sudan.