After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.
Jules Claus has embraced Christmas again and is getting ready for the busiest time of the year together with grandpa Noël. Everything seems to go according to plan, until Jules receives a very special letter with an intriguing question...
Armin is in crisis. One fateful day he discovers he is infertile and has been throughout his life. From this he discovers his first wife, Monika, was unfaithful before she died. How else could she have the child that Armin always thought was his? His paranoia drives him to find the truth.
When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?
Vincke and Verstuyft are one of the best detective teams of the Antwerp police force. When they are confronted with the disappearance of a top official and the murder of two prostitutes, the trail leads to the almost retired assassin Angelo Ledda. Since Ledda starts showing symptoms of Alzheimer's, it's getting more and more difficult to complete his contracts. When he has to murder a 12-year old call-girl, he refuses and becomes a target himself. While Vincke and Verstuyft are chasing him and counting the corpses, Ledda is taking care of his employers.
A 14th-century peasant becomes transfixed by a statue of the Virgin Mary, and petitions to be walled into a cell attached to the church as a religious hermit.
Sint and his mischievous assistant Zwarte Piet enjoy collecting children's letters at night, but lose a whole bag.
After almost thirty years, Germaine, Firmin's great love, suddenly returns to her hometown. Firmin is overjoyed and determined to win Germaine's heart back, but Germaine rejects his advances. Then Mohammed Boutrous, a young and talented boxer, seeks out Firmin. He wants Firmin to train him. Firmin accepts, hoping to regain his honor and the love of his life...
Placide's dad tells him on his deathbed he'll haunt Placide if he doesn't find a wife soon. Placide cautiously agrees, but he only wants to settle for a very beautiful woman. That might be easier said than done, since he is a vagabond. When he accidentally enters a photo shoot, Placide meets Sarah. He falls in love, but she is way out of his reach.
The Barons have a motto: "slack off more to live longer." Every human being is born with a credit of steps. Every step you take brings you closer to death. We Barons know this from the start.
In this film version of the Dutch-language classic ('heimat'-)novel by Flemish author Felix Timmermans, the title character is a city-boy from Lier who after recovering from a life-threatening disease changes his life completely and his name to the self-invented Pallieter. He moves in with Charlote, a naive, caring relative in the country, where he starts frolicking, no longer caring for image, career or possessions, but concentrates on enjoying life -such as a draftee relative's Brueghelian wedding- and finds love with Marieke. A dark story-line however is when projected work on the river in the name of economical progress threatens the rural landscape they have fallen in love with...
In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.
Story of two con men, Boorman and his younger assistant Laarmans, who are trying to sell companies their non-existing magazine.
Businessman Christian Vandenheuvel planned to spend the long weekend with his young mistress, Lisa. Instead, they're take hostage by Jos Diels and Nick, two of the 46 laborers who lost their job recently when Christian had his family film bankrupted. Each victim fails to escape, even the fire alarm doesn't get them freed. After Jos realizes the mistress is his only daughter, and Nick falls in love with Lisa, the masked men's mood evolves as they progress to truth time, when the police arrives.
A biography of the Belgian nun Jeannine Deckers, who became a popular singer in the early 1960s and struggled with the contradiction between the church and her true self.
In pre-WWII Holland, the penniless, illegitimate son of a powerful bailiff sets out to become a lawyer as he spends a lifetime struggling to prove his worth to his relentlessly spiteful father.
In the sequel to "Winky's Horse", 8-year old Winky looks after the horse of St Nicholas. Then one day the horse runs away.
There is only one thing Winky wants: a horse, a real horse to ride. But horses are expensive. Fortunately it is the season of Sinterklaas; Winky just asks Sinterklaas for a horse. Than everything will work out alright. Or will it?
A frank and funny romantic comedy set in Antwerp, filmed in a quirkily inventive style, Madly in Love has a lot to say about human relationships. It focuses on the four women of the Miller family: teen daughter Eva, her mother Judith, aunt Barbara and older half-sister Michelle, as they work their way through the chaos called love. The result is a roller coaster ride of first crushes, lust, affairs, baby fever, and indestructible love. The four women are beautiful, courageous and sensible, but are also sometimes a bit lost. Can their male counterparts handle this dangerous cocktail of determination and female hormones?
Four girls discover a primitive hidden village where everybody falls asleep and all children are gone.
At the deathbed of his used-to-be militant mother an older man looks back at his childhood, when he was in love with his sensual aunt Coleta.
On the day of his forced retirement, a grumpy school principal decides, together with his neighbour, to search for a wife on the Internet...
A tale centered on the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302 where the Flemish rank and file won a major victory over the glorious French knights.
A village outside Brussels is rocked when a child is killed in a hit-and-run accident and its inhabitants react in a variety of ways to the tragic news.
In 1913, a young woman starts work as a maid in a seedy Parisian boarding house full of eccentrics. When she falls in love with one of the guests, she must choose between her son and her new romance.
The story of a small and conservative West-Flemish village opposing the construction of a bridge over the Scheldt.
A mystery hidden for generations. Now the truth will finally be revealed.
A family film, based on a well-known Dutch story from the Middle Ages. Mariken tells the compelling and poetic story of spirited young girl named Mariken. The orphan Mariken lives in a secluded forest with an eccentric old hermit. One day, she decides to leave her surroundings and sets off for town to buy a new goat. On her adventurous journey into the 'real' world, she finds out about the good and bad sides of people.
Gerrit de Veer, a novice writer on a 16th-century Dutch merchant vessel, chronicles the daring mission to discover a trade route across the North Pole to Asia. But the heroic journey turns into tragedy when the ship gets stuck in the relentless, penetrating ice. The men are forced to spend the winter on the frozen, arctic wasteland of Nova Zembla, fighting polar bears, hunger and lethal temperatures. Their chances of making it until the following spring are virtually zero.
Marieke wants to live her life. But how can she succeed if love has been taken away from her? She seeks warmth in the arms of much older men to find the strength to face the past and finally be herself. Marieke is 20 years old. She lives with her mother, Jeanne, a woman left cold and distant ever since her husband died. During the day, Marieke works in a Brussels chocolate factory. At night, she escapes into the arms of much older men. With them she feels strong, cherished and free. The arrival of Jacoby, a book editor living abroad, searching for her father's last manuscript, upsets Marieke's precarious balance. Her mother does everything in her power to keep them apart. She fears that he will reveal the secret that has remained hidden for so many years. Marieke falls in love with Jacoby but devastated by the truth of her father's death, she sinks despair. Will she find the strength to accept the truth and live anew?
Konraad, 83, has written a letter to his relatives saying he wants to die. Maria, Konraad's daughter and only child, refuses to discuss her fathers wish. Instead, she wants to move him to a flat for elderly people. Her two grown daughters Sabine and Eva have problems of their own. Sabine has a troubled marriage and her eldest daughter Haas is too wise for her age. Eva is in therapy, recovering from an abortion. Ernst, Marias husband, is the only one who takes an interest. He decides to help Konraad realize his last wish. In doing so, he crosses his wife and increases the already existing distance between them.
March 11th, 2002. John R. takes the head of security and 17 others hostage in Amsterdam biggest skyscraper. John R. demands to speak with the Philips head of Sound&Vision. His goal is to warn people about a large-scale fraud, aimed at brainwashing consumers by means of widescreen TV sets. In the film, we find out about John's preliminary frustrations, his bizarre encounter with Philips head of Sound&Vision Gerard Wesselinck, their impossible friendship, rivalry and John's armed attempt to force the executive to do penance in public.
He's the "Rocky" of the 15th century-defender of the poor, enemy of evil, champion of justice. He's fearless and the strongest man in the land. He's ready and willing to take on all wrong doers-rich and poor. Accompanied by a lovable, meek little friend, his quest takes him on an unforgettable journey. Swamp monsters, knights in armor, duels, royal pageantry, and damsels in distress all abound in this story of timeless values. In the spirit of "Robin Hood," it's a robust, romantic tale: a feast for the eyes and a joy for the heart.
Psychodrama. Black and white images of a mining area under the influence of a highly orthodox Catholicism in the 1930s are interspersed with color images of a protest action to save a small church.
Two young police officers find themselves torn between collaboration and resistance as they navigate the Nazi-occupied Antwerp during World War II.
Sarah, a beautiful and gifted 15-year-old from a wealthy but chaotic family, holds on to one dream: to run away from home and to become a professional ballet dancer.
Based on three stories by R.J. Peskens.
Nine year old Finn lives with his father in a small town. Together with his best friend Erik he plays football, but he prefers to play music. His dad wants him to play football, just like every other kid his age. Finn does not understand why, but his father doesn't want to talk about it. When Finn meets a mysterious old man, who plays the violin beautifully, he decides to learn how to play the violin as well. The old man teaches him, while Finn's dad thinks he is playing football... Is Finn the only one who sees the magic of music? What does his father hide?
Max, the confident firstborn of a wealthy Dutch-Jewish family, enjoys security, love, and his father Simon’s pride as head of SuperTex. Yet a sudden nagging self-doubt and inner emptiness drive him to question his path. The film follows Max’s journey to reconcile his desire for change with familial expectations and deep-rooted tradition.
In 1833, when the fledgling Belgian kingdom still fears a Dutch invasion, recruits were selected annually from an age cohort by a draw of lots in each locality. In this grim, then contemporary drama by the 'father of Flemish literature', Hendrik Conscience, Jan Braems, a poor and naive farmers-boy, accepts the not uncommon offer by a rich family to sell his lucky ticket (out) to their son for a hefty sum compared to the miserable labor wages at the time. Army life is even harsher then a farmhand's, especially for a Dutch-speaking an-alphabet who simply can't understand his francophone superiors, and Jan's nature is not complacent enough for military discipline even by todays standards, so he soon gets into all kinds of trouble, including gambling his capital away and a venereal disease. When his girlfriend back home goes looking for him, her life is doomed as well.
Colin, an ambitious young American businessman, has a deal with a potential client, a rich Arab sheikh who is a passionate pigeon fancier. The sheikh has tried several times to buy a champion pigeon, but the owner continues to stubbornly refuse his offer. In an attempt to gain the trust of the Sheikh, Colin offers him a deal: if he manages to convince the owner to sell the champion pigeon, the sheikh will agree to do business with Colin's company. But when Colin meets Jos, the grumpy owner of the pigeon, and Isabella, his granddaughter, he realizes that this mission will not be as easy as he had hoped.
Young journalist Sebastian Zöllner is writing an article on artist Manuel Kaminski. Zöllner hopes that Kaminski dies soon, so that he can cash in on his article.
The family patriarch Van Paemel is a farmer on baron de Wilde's estate. His mild-mannered son Désire is accidentally shot during a hunting party on the estate and remains an invalid. Eduard, the eldest son, is a member of the socialist workers' movement and involved in strike actions in the city. Against her father's wishes, his daughter Cordule starts an affair with the poacher Masco. His youngest daughter, Romanie, is forced to work as a domestic servant at the castle, where she is seduced by Maurice, the baron's son and heir, and becomes pregnant. When the youngest son Kamiel also has to leave the farm because he is drafted into the army, the lack of workers on Van Paemel's farm becomes critical. As a result, the family is evicted from their home because they cannot pay the rent. Three of the children emigrate to the USA, one becomes a nun and one dies, until only the farmer and his wife remain.
The true story of the 19th century Belgian priest, Father Damien, who volunteered to go to the island of Molokai, to console and care for the lepers.
The tale of the extraordinary life and times of Lucky, a horse that was born in captivity but achieves his dream of running free with the help of a stableboy.
Taming the Floods fulfills the dream of the landscape architect Jan Dijkstra: he can design an area in Poland that is regularly flooded by the river. Dijkstra wants to create a large nature reserve where people no longer have any influence: an area where the river can run its course and wolves can be set free. The fanatical landscape architect however does not bear in mind the needs of the local people. His younger colleague David is eventually sent to Poland to get things organised. Taming the Floods is a mixture of documentary and feature in which all the scenes are borrowed from situations which really happen or have happened. Alongside actors, roles are played by the local people, including farmers and a priest.
The 1950s. A family has its annual family reunion to commemorate the anniversary of mother's death. People drink and eat heavily and after a while all restrictions are lost. Family members start venting old frustrations, discussions and tensions. Eventually one homosexual young man gets depressed and a drama escalates.
A forty-year-old man loses his work and is unemployed. There is a continual coming and going between uncomfortable in his own skin unemployed person, his mistress - a middle-class - and an exuberant and fragile girl.
An eccentric multimillionaire signs an agreement to have his life ended. While selecting his coffin he meets a young woman who has signed up for the same arrangement. Trouble ensues when the couple falls in love and wishes to get out of the contract.
After World War I, widower Renier has returned to his estate Horlebecq. His sole diversion is his correspondence with the Parisian Rolande, who he met during the war. Even though his family is pressuring him into marrying his sister-in-law Emily, Renier stays obsessed with Rolande and even visits her in Paris. She manages to persuade him to invest large sums of money into the "Academie de Beauté" in Paris. His reckless investments and breaking off his engagement with Emily leads to unbearable tensions at Horlebecq...
In the Belgian hamlet of Verbrande Brug, former lovers Monique and Louis reconnect at a carnival, stirring up drama with their current partners.
When the delivery of presents goes wrong and Grandpa Noël gets in trouble, siblings Jules and Noor must work together to save Christmas.
A Flemish family comes together in their maternal home. Oscar, the grotesque patriarch, his bedridden wife Magda, his feeble son Johnny and his daughter Julia, who's married to a Moroccan soccer player. There's something wrong with Magda, who's not only plagued by her physical decay, but also by visions of her dead sister Marleen.
Max and Tikkelotje own an unsuccessful theatre company. When Tikkelotje notices Ramon - the faithful companion to Saint Nicholas - playing the guitar and singing, she decides to kidnap both him and Slechtweervandaag, Saint Nicholas’s trusty steed. Saint Nicholas is devastated, but eventually he pulls himself together and goes around the houses to collect the children’s wishlists. An adventure involving assorted people then ensues as he tried to beat the clock to rescue the hapless pair.
Following over two dozen different people in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, Akerman examines acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance.
Ruben is a lone and unbalanced young man who lost his sight in childhood. Marie is an albino woman of temperate look and with a lot of insecurities. She has a beautiful voice and, along with Ruben, shares a mutual love for books and tales. Ruben's mother hires her as a reader to read her son books orally. While they live in a mansion, between these two lonely souls sparks love, but will love still be blind if the man recovers from his blindness?
This is a portrait of an old man who is kept locked up in the attic by his daughter with the excuse that outside it continuously rains. The man escapes in his imagination, carving wooden animals. Suddenly he realizes that the Flood is about to happen.
The poem well integrated in the film, was interpreted by writer/actor/painter Pjeroo Roobjee. The project is melting pot of poetry, animation and music resulting in a 20 minute short film.
1985. Georges is a born market vendor. As a driven salesman he sells anything, anytime, to anyone. When he hears that the Pope is coming to Belgium, he smells his chance. In addition to the grounds, where tens of thousands of believers will attend an open-air mass, Café Derby is for rent. Georges is sure to earn a small fortune. But his wife and five children are not convinced. It would be another move in too short a time. But as George puts his mind to something...
We follow the lives of six men searching for true love or just a little happiness at a time when men sometimes have no idea how to be men and what women actually expect of them.
On a Belgian beach at Camping Cosmos. The delegate send by the Ministry is confronted with sex and murder. The residents enjoy their holidays in a peculiar way...
The men of Chemics International lead a quiet life. However, this is cruelly disrupted by an industrial accident in which a toxic substance is released. Some workers are killed; many others are irrevocably contaminated and may suffer permanent injuries. The management, government, press and unions do not react, seeing this as an unfortunate incident. When one of Herman and Jef's best friends also dies, they have had enough. Together they made an ultimate attempt to reveal the truth to the outside world.
When 65-year-old Fatima discovers that her husband has been living a double life in Morocco for the past ten years, her world collapses. Furious and determined not to let fate get her way, she decides to pick up where she left off 50 years earlier, when she was to play Hamlet. Together with her best friends Mériem, Romaissa and Inès, three other grandmothers from Molenbeek, these "Baronnes" are about to make a decision that will turn their lives, those of their entourage, their neighborhood and the whole country upside down.
Belgium short film
Dode Hoek (Blind Spot) is the story of Jan Verbeeck, the uncompromising commissioner of the Antwerp drug squad. Known as Mr. Zero Tolerance, he is hugely popular with the people and the media. The country is thrown into commotion when he announces that he is leaving the police force just before the elections to join the extreme right party, VPV. On his last day as a policeman, he leads an investigation that takes him to Charleroi where a raid on a drug lab sets in motion a series of unforeseeable and fatal events.
Cologne towards the end of the Second World War. The city is in ruins, everyone is afraid, many are dead. It is a time of great inhumanity. Cologne’s young Edelweiss Pirates refuse to submit to the pressure of the Nazi regime. They fight with the Hitler Youth and scrawl anti-war propaganda on walls. Karl is an Edelweiss Pirate; his younger brother, Peter, is in the Hitler Youth movement. The two young men have been alone ever since their mother’s death in a bombing raid; their father is serving at the front, and their older brother, Otto, has been killed in action. Otto’s financée, Cilly, is doing her best to survive the war with her children. Carl is trying to help her.
The film starts with the main character Laura, a young woman with advanced cancer, entering quite upset the home of her parents and claiming to have stopped chemo therapy and having left her husband. The worried parents call the other three adult daughters into the house and they arrive one by one. For the first time in 6 years the entire family is united again. The characters are drawn as tensions rise from old conflicts and as the situation sinks in that Laura might be terminally ill. The movie eventually shifts from a lively sometimes comical beginning into the serious theme of dying and does handle this quite tactfully and moving. While the film touches on many areas surrounding death (including religion, graveyard, care, eutanasia) the main focus is on the transformation of the characters that are thrown out of their busy lifes into this situation, eventually accepting it and dealing with it.
Claire and Pierre's marriage hits the skids after Claire, pregnant with twins, feels that one embryo is crushing the other and decides to abort half the pregnancy.
The film is based on the popular Dutch childrens book by Chris van Abkoude. In a Dutch port in 1921 lives a 10-year-old orphan boy known to everyone simply as Little Crumb. His poverty-stricken mother Lize van Dien filled with shame was forced to turn him over to Mrs. Koster soon after he was born. Foster mother Mrs. Koster, who has cared for him since he was a baby, is very poor too, unable to support him by herself and proves to be a cruel taskmaster who insists Crumb bring her money before shell feed him. Somehow he must earn his keep out on the streets and can only go home after he has earned enough money. Crumb becomes an urchin stealing from the streets barrows and the shops to stay alive, sleeping in churches or huddled in doorways. Sometimes he has to run off from the police and he has earned the enmity of the most grownups around him.
In 1885, Africa is a succulent cake destined to be wildly divided and everyone wants a piece. A disturbed European king, a Pygmy working in a luxury hotel, a successful but lonely businessman, an enslaved porter, a young army deserter, a ghostly clarinetist. Some benefit from colonialism and greed. Others suffer racism and violence.
In one fell swoop, nine-year old David Van de Steen lost his mother, his father and his sister in an attack by the Brabant Killers in Aalst. His grandfather, Albert, has the well-nigh impossible task of giving David a new perspective on life, a future.
How the last King of the Belgians becomes the first Emperor of Europe.
Who's keeping the citizens of a Belgian provincial town out of their sleep? Is it Santa Clause?
When Anna, a twenty-eight-year-old photographer, is put in charge of a report on the restoration works at The Ostend Museum of Modern Art, she discovers by chance five paintings signed Constant Permeke, whose power and mystery move and fascinate her.She decides to embark on a quest to find out about who Permeke actually was, the places where he lived, how he worked, what experiences he went through.
Cinema version of the 5 part TV series. During World War II, Stan Vandewalle saves boxing trainer Max from the bombed German war prisoners camp, and shoots two German soldiers while escaping. After the war, Stan resolves to put all his frustration over the death of his slow-witted brother Aloïs, who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, with his side-car against a farmer's truck in making come true Aloïs other dream, to see Stan becoming 'king of the world' as boxer.
Tomasz , a young Polish refugee wanders through Antwerp, looking for the woman who helped him to get his mother through the Iron Curtain. During his search he meets alcoholics, vagrants and other outcasts of the society.
A police officer investigates the case of a man shot dead in a room locked from the inside. A suicide? Then where's the gun?
She's a lawyer with a social conscience. He's a calculating industrialist who keeps many deals hidden from her. But when she discovers that her husband is involved in illegal arms traffic and is also having an affair with one of her colleagues, a direct confrontation ensues.
A short film about our climate, our conscience and our future.
July 28, 1914. The Great War breaks out.
An explicator of silent movies falls in love with the star of film he's accompanying.
Antwerp. Someone is making a feature film. After shooting the scenes on location, the filmmaker wanders to the railway station. He's having difficulties with his material, it's a commissioned film. The story is giving him trouble too. But he cannot abandon the project. He now wants to introduce a male character so that he can explain his problems.
The wife of a local dictator gets a miscarriage during a failed assault by rebels. The dictators' brother suggesst to present the newly born baby of one a the dead rebels as his posterity.
All young Justin and his father want to do is sit down and enjoy watching a soccer game together. When this simple act sparks a chain of events leading to Justin running from the law, the boy must now embark on a thrilling adventure to reunite with his father. In order to fight the system, however, he must enlist the help of a former anarchist, and together they'll need to apply the secret of the Hop.
When his grandfather suddenly falls ill, holiday-hating Jules learns of his family's magical legacy and realizes he's the only hope to save Christmas.
Five close friends, all of them married, share a loft to meet their mistresses. One day they find the body of a young woman in the loft. Since there are only five keys to the loft, the five men begin to suspect each other of murder.
Political pamphlet in which the theories of Marxist Ernest Mandel are contrasted with the soothing parlance of political leader Paul van den Boeynants. Furthermore, the flow of 'left dogmatism' is alternated with cinematic and musical anecdotes.
Gaston grew up on the fringes of society and interacts with other people as little as possible. Leo, on the other hand, is a very bourgeois person. He lives way above his station, but has a heart of gold. Using forged cheques and unsecured credit cards, he tries to keep up appearances. By a coincidence, Gaston's fate is linked to Leo's.
When his father dies a young man has the choice to continue the farmwork of his old man who suffered because of the hard labour and all the regulations.
In this film within a film, a Belgian serial killer escapes prison and finds that a filmmaker is making a movie about his life. A maverick director, a merciless producer, an insubordinate star, and a conviced serial killer all try to survive the deadliest place on Earth: a movie set.
The Detour is about a young woman travelling through Europe in search of herself and the truth of life. It is based on meetings between goatherd Joanna and Austrian author and playwright Thomas Bernhard. Joanna is lost after her boyfriend dumps her at a Women's Relief Centre in Rotterdam. She works in a library and visits the theatre, where she first sees a play by Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard's philosophy permeates Joanna's thoughts. When Camille invites her to visit the French Pyrenees, she accepts. On the way, she decides to visit Bernhard in Austria. She attempts to start a relationship with him and thereby finds herself.
It's about a girl, S., who is dangling between Brussels and New York, boys and girls, love and hate, life and death. She has a mother, a father, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, but none of them are any good to her.