Belgian Films Put on a Show of Force at Festivals

French-speaking Belgium hit a high-water mark at the Cannes Film Festival in May, with 11 Belgian co-productions claiming accolades and acclaim across the Croisette. Alongside Critics’ Week opener “Ghost Trail” and the Cannes jury and best actress prize-winner “Emilia Pérez,” eight of those co-productions received support from Belgium’s Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, while just as many shared a proud Francophone voice.

At Venice, industry delegates built on that robust show of force, touting home-grown projects like Fabrice Du Welz’s police thriller “Maldoror” and co-productions like Aude Léa Rapin’s sci-fi drama “Planet B” and Marie Losier’s music doc “Peaches Goes Bananas,” while young producers took to the Lido to forge new partnerships beyond the traditional mold.

“We’re trying to diversify as much as possible,” says French-speaking Belgium’s Cinema and Audiovisual Center director Jeanne Brunfaut. “Though we tend to partner with [other Francophone countries], we want to encourage our producers to look further afield, to see what’s happening in Latin America and Scandinavia in order to build lasting partnerships and to broaden their field of action.”

And so delegates from Francophone Belgium and Luxembourg shared the spotlight at this year’s Venice Production Bridge for a joint industry focus titled “The Center of Attraction.” The Belgian contingent placed a particular accent on industry potential, welcoming 10 emerging and established producers — among them the outfits behind recent Cannes prizewinners “The Damned” and “Annette,” alongside leading figures in animation and documentary films — in order to flex a wider range of muscle from Brussels.

Home to the European sector’s best-known tax shelter — among a number of other cumulative and mutually compatible public aids — Belgium has become fertile ground for international co-productions, especially those that share an acute social conscience.

While local sons Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have lent their name and renown to projects from fellow Palme d’Or winners Ken Loach and Cristian Mungiu — and have recently supported Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Most Precious of Cargoes” through their Les Films du Fleuve banner — the country’s Cinema and Audiovisual Center has encouraged such unions with a $1.3 million co-production fund. Eight of this year’s Cannes-selected co-productions benefited from that support.

At the same time, the film board is also looking to bolster an incoming generation, now offering a $166,000 production grant that emerging and untested talents can apply for without a finished script — a prerequisite for traditional film commission support.

The incubator program has kick-started a number of up-and-coming outfits, helping the Namur-based Roue Libre Prods. bring the gross-out comedy “Mother Schmuckers” to Sundance while pushing the erstwhile doc-focused Michigan Films to make the leap to dramatic features. The latter move has proven particularly fruitful, leading to successive Cannes prizes for Paloma Sermon-Daï’s “It’s Raining in the House” in 2023 and Roberto Minervini’s “The Damned” this year, thus establishing Michigan Film as a formidable player on the European scene.

Of course, those new horizons extend beyond the festival circuit, with the Brussels-set action thriller “Night Call” set for domestic release this September ahead of a U.S. bow, through Magnet Releasing, in the months to come. Channeling an impressive degree of Hollywood showmanship, the film lights a rather different spark — one that the film board hopes to both kindle at home and promote abroad.

“This too is Belgian cinema,” says Brunfaut. “We can excel in the social vein while encouraging comedies and thrillers and genre fare. We need to keep digging and diversifying and demonstrating our expertise. Our animation studios and post-production providers are widely recognized, while our technical skills and artistic points of view can only enrich international productions. That’s our message and that’s what builds long-lasting relationships.”