Flanders (i) Magazine #33 - Autumn 2015

TAKE 33 | AUTUMN 2015 | E 3.99

his story of time

LUKAS BOSSUYT’S SUM OF HISTORIES

KOREA OPPORTUNITIES

ONE EXAM TO END THEM ALL IN REACH FOR THE SKY

INN LIMBO

BAD

BOYS ROBIN PRONT AND JEROEN PERCEVAL ON THE ARDENNES

MANU RICHE CHECKS IN TO THE PROBLEMSKI HOTEL

VEERLE BAETENS GILLES COULIER GILLES DE SCHRYVER ALAIN DESSAUVAGE ROBRECHT HEYVAERT KEVIN JANSSENS JAN & RAF ROOSENS WIELAND SPECK NATHALIE TEIRLINCK LUC VRYDAGHS

#talentmatters

EN FRANÇAIS

Alain Dessauvage It’s not your movie, it’s the director’s, insists the editor whose credits include Moscow, Belgium; Bullhead; The Ardennes; and Couple in a Hole

Problemski Hotel Documentary-maker Manu Riche on commandeering a derelict Brussels bank building to bring Dimitri Verhulst’s novel to the screen

The Ardennes Robin Pront and Jeroen Perceval on the origins of their new thriller; Kevin Janssens on playing Kenny; and Veerle Baetens on being the only girl in the story

Sum of Histories Writer/director Lukas Bossuyt on exploring alternative universes and why his film is really a time-travelling love story

i-Opener Kebab Royal, the new film from Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens, follows a fictional King of the Belgians on a Balkan odyssey

C NTENTS TAKE 33

Talent Matters The two Roosens brothers speak as one on set; plus news about Johan Heldenbergh; Felix van Groeningen; Matthias Schoenaerts; and Tom Geens

this is

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A series of content flyers and e-newsletters presenting an overview of recent, new and upcoming audiovisual productions made in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium

En annexe de cette publication vous trouverez le supplément en français

The magazine

38 34 10

20 8

IN PRINT

Follow, read, watch, like and share

Wieland Speck The Berlin Panorama chief picks his favourite from the Flemish films he has selected for his sidebar and insists it’s his ‘inner harp’ that guides him Under the Influence: Nathalie Teirlinck In pre-production on her feature debut Tonic Immobility, the filmmaker acknowledges the debt she owes to Ingmar Bergman and Michael Haneke De Wereldvrede Gilles Coulier and Gilles De Schryver outline the plans for their production company as they launch TV series The Natives

Robrecht Heyvaert It’s all about the story, says the 28-year-old cinematographer hailed as the new Robby Müller

Reach for the SKY Simon Dhoedt and Gert Van Berckelaer of Visualantics took almost three years to capture Korea’s mind-boggling university entrance exam

Barber Shop There’s nothing quite like a barber’s chair for getting people talking, be it in Jenin or Johannesburg, says documentary-maker Luc Vrydaghs

SOCIAL

screener.be The promotional V.O.D. platform that is available to sales agents, buyers and curators around the globe interested in audiovisual talent and creations from Flanders and Brussels, Belgium

54 52 48 46 44 42

ONLINE

ON SITE

flandersimage.com The website keeps you up to date with audiovisual talent and content made in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium. Read the news when it happens, browse and search in the online product guide, or get the environmentally friendly digital versions of publications such as the magazine, brochures and flyers

Flanders Image also attends several festivals and markets such as Annecy, Berlin, Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Idfa, Locarno, Mipcom, Miptv, Montréal, San Sebastian, Toronto, Venice and many more

THE AUTUMN OF 2015 IS SET TO BECOME THE BUSIEST SEASON EVER FOR FLEMISH CINEMA, WITH 10 DIRECTORS PRESENTING THEIR FIRST OR SECOND FEATURES BETWEEN NOW AND JANUARY. TO CELEBRATE THEIR SUCCESS, FLANDERS IMAGE

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BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER FOR A PHOTO SHOOT.

talentmatters

Pictured from left to right are: Jan Bultheel (Cafard, selected for Busan); Filip Peeters (Wat mannen willen/What Men Want); Bilall Fallah (co-director Black, selected for Toronto); Raf Reyntjens (Paradise Trips, selected for Mannheim); Lenny Van Wesemael (Café Derby, selected for Ostend and the Hamptons); Lukas Bossuyt (Sum of Histories, selected for Montréal); Cecilia Verheyden (Achter de wolken/Behind the Clouds); Adil El Arbi (co-director Black, selected for Toronto); Wim Vandekeybus (Galloping Mind); and Robin Pront (The Ardennes, selected for Toronto and Ghent).

With thanks to Flemish camera and lighting rental company Lites 

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# talentmatters talentwatch

UNDERGROUND MOVIE It’s the title that has everyone assuming it is a metaphor.

But it isn’t: Couple in a Hole is about… a couple who live in a hole in the ground deep in a forest somewhere in Europe (the film was shot in the Pyrenees), having escaped there to get away from society. Society, however, has other ideas.

Directed by Belgium-born, UK-based Tom Geens, Couple in a Hole is a UK-Belgian co-production starring Kate Dickie and Paul Higgins, who last appeared together in Andrea Arnold’s Red Road. The editor is Alain Dessauvage (interviewed on page 38). The film premiered in Toronto, with further festival screenings set in Zürich and London.

ZOO STORY Johan Heldenbergh is the latest Flemish actor to land a major role in a US film with The Zookeeper’s Wife, in which he is set to star opposite Hollywood’s actrice du jour Jessica Chastain.

Director is New Zealander Niki Caro (Whale Rider, North Country). The film is due to shoot in Prague this autumn for a 2016 release, with German actor Daniel Brühl also in the cast.

The Zookeeper’s Wife is based on the book by Diane Ackerman and tells the true story - based on the diaries they kept - of Jan and Antonina Zabinski. Jan was a noted zoologist at the Warsaw Zoo who, with his wife, managed to provide shelter for hundreds of people (and animals) during the Nazi invasion of Poland. He subsequently became a prisoner of war and was recognised by the State of Israel to be one of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’.

Heldenbergh, 48, has long been a familiar face on TV, films and the stage in his native Flanders, but attracted international attention playing the male lead, Didier (or Monroe), in The Broken Circle Breakdown, which was Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Film last year. Other key roles have been in The Misfortunates and Moscow, Belgium.

The actor was most recently seen in Jaco Van Dormael’s irreverent satire, The Brand New Testament, which was a boxoffice hit in France over the summer and is this year’s Belgian Oscar entry. He will next appear in Felix van Groeningen’s Belgica, now at an advanced stage of post-production.

ALEXANDRA LAMY IN VINCENT AND THE END OF THE WORLD

CROSSING BORDERS

Souvenir on flandersimage.com

FELIX LETS THE RIGHT ONE IN

SCHOENAERTS

DIVERSIFIES

Flemish superstar Matthias Schoenaerts has added another string to his bow, but this time a considerable way behind the camera. The actor, seen most recently in The Danish Girl and A Bigger Splash, has bought a share in Antwerp agency Hakuna Casting (featured in issue 31 of Flanders i). Set up by Nabil Mallat, Chafic Amraoui and Black directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, Hakuna aims to introduce performers from more diverse ethnic backgrounds into Flemish films and onto the Flemish stage. Recent films on which Hakuna has worked include Black and Belgica. hakunacasting.com

Quizzed in the last issue about plans to ‘go Hollywood’, Felix van Groeningen commented he would have to be “convinced that it’s the right film for me to make” before he did so. Well, it seems like he has found it, courtesy of Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and minimajor New Regency.

According to US trade paper Variety, van Groeningen is set to direct Beautiful Boy, a project to which Cameron Crowe was previously attached. Based on books by father and son David and Nic Sheff, the film (scripted by Luke Davies) deals with a father watching his son’s struggle with methamphetamine addiction.

The project is reportedly in an advanced stage of preproduction, with casting due to be announced shortly. Van Groeningen, meanwhile, is in post-production on his latest Flemish film, Belgica, set against the backdrop of the local dance scene at the turn of the millennium.

Belgica on flandersimage.com

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Flemish actress Veerle Baetens may be increasingly in demand in France these days (see page 18), but the cross-border traffic has been by no means one-way in the second half of 2015, with two top French actors - Isabelle Huppert and Alexandra Lamy - taking key roles in Flemish films.

Huppert, who won Best Actress for La pianiste in Cannes in 2001 and was last seen in Flanders selling time-shares in Ostend in the 2010 film Copacabana, has an (on the surface) even less glamorous role in Bavo Defurne’s Souvenir. She plays Liliane, who once competed in the Eurovision Song Contest but now works in a meat factory, adding bay-leaves to pots of pâté.

Things start looking up when she meets Jean, a much younger boxer. She falls in love with him; he persuades her to make a comeback. “It’s about hope and making your dreams come true,” says Defurne, who co-wrote Souvenir with Jacques Boon and Yves Verbraeken of production company Indeed Productions. “Liliane has lost her career but, given a new opportunity to find happiness, she grasps it.”

The role of Jean is played by upcoming French actor Kevin Azais, who won the César for most promising newcomer in 2014’s Cannes Directors Fortnight entry Les combattants.

Flemish actors Jan Hammenecker and Johan Leysen round out the cast, and music is supplied by US retro band Pink Martini.

Lamy, meanwhile, plays the unconventional French aunt of a suicidal youth in Christophe Van Rompaey’s new film, Vincent and the End of the World, which is expected to be released in 2016. The actress, who is known for her roles in François Ozon’s Ricky and French box-office hit Brice de Nice, takes young Vincent under her wing and decides to cure his suicidal tendencies by showing him the joys of the world.

The role of Vincent is played by teenage actor Spencer Bogaert who was on Belgian screens recently as young Frikke, the boy who gets sucked into a sinister computer game in Labyrinthus.

Vincent was written by Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem of production company A Private View, with a cast that also includes Barbara Sarafian from Van Rompaey’s breakthrough movie, Moscow, Belgium.

talentwatch

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# talentmatters

JAN (L) AND RAF ROOSENS

TEXT NICK RODDICK

PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

DOUBLE ACT Back from the Cannes premiere of their short film Copain, the Roosens brothers are gearing up for their first feature.

In May, a second set of Belgian brothers followed the Dardennes up the steps of the Palais des Festivals in Cannes - metaphorically, that is. Jan and Raf Roosens did a ‘montée des marches’ because their short film, Copain (Buddy), had earned a coveted Competition slot in the Short Film programme. Now it’s all over, they are determined it will not be the last time they tread that particular red carpet.

“It was a unique experience,” admits Jan, the older of the two (he is 32; Raf turned 30 this summer). “When they told us we were selected, we went through the roof. The thing is,

“ To the crew and cast, we’re more like one person with one voice ”

feature film: it has the same characters, the same setting.

In fact, it was during one of the brainstorming sessions when we were writing the feature film that we came up with the idea for the short. The feature is about two brothers, one of whom has always looked up to the other, who asks himself, ‘Do I have to follow the same path as my brother’?”

As it turns out, the Roosens brothers themselves didn’t originally plan to follow the same path. Raf went to film school while Jan opted to study economics. “After I graduated,” he says, “I went to Paris for a year and, when I came back, Raf was making his graduation film.

Because I was on vacation and had time, I helped him by producing the film.

Afterwards I began working in the financial sector as a bond broker.

COPAIN

“But of course we’re brothers and he was always talking about what he was doing. Then, one night, we decided we were going to start our own production company. The next day I quit my job and started up the production company. It began with me being more the financial guy but it grew from that into a collaboration.”

The company, Rococo, has an impressive array of client commercials and a website bursting with videos. These include the trailer for the Roosens’s first short, Rotkop (Skunk), which also features kids getting up to no good in a park beside a housing project, and whose central character also makes a choice, although this time it goes the other way: Olli chooses his cancer-stricken mother over his so-called friends.

Fortunately, no such make-or-break choices have so far had to be made in the Roosens brothers’ working lives. “When we first started,” says Raf, “I was the director and Jan would say ‘OK, but this is my opinion’. He had good opinions, so we started working together. To the crew and cast, we’re more like one person with one voice.”

“The thing is,” chips in Jan, “we actually try to avoid being two directors on the set. Both the crew and the cast feel that we’re directing together, and the only discussions we have are when we’re behind the monitor. That’s how it works on set: we make a scene, we look at the shot, we discuss it and then one of us goes to tell the crew ‘OK, the shot wasn’t great… maybe we’ll do another angle’, or we tell the actors ‘You have to do it more like this’. We have only one rule: there can never be a veto.”

Raf agrees. “The main thing is, we try to act as one director on set,” he says - something he claims comes naturally. “We really like the same thing - the same images, the same way of telling stories. We’re more like a sounding board to each other, and that’s the good thing about working together.”

Collaboration will evidently continue with the feature, for which they already have a potential producer. “In that way, Cannes was really good,” says Jan. “We met a lot of producers from France and other countries but it was really good to get to know people from the Flemish film industry as well.”  Copain on flandersimage.com Skunk on flandersimage.com

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you get invited to all these really unique experiences and dinners, and you get to meet all these incredibly interesting people.” Not to mention people who may help further your career.

But, concedes Raf, a prize would also have been nice.

“During the 10 days we were there,” he says, “we had a chance of winning the Palme d’Or. When there are a lot of people saying they really enjoyed the film, you start thinking, ‘OK, the nomination was great but now it would be good to have the prize’.

You always want more: it’s natural. In the end, Copain didn’t make it so we said to ourselves: ‘We have to come back here!’”

Copain, in other words, is just the start. It’s about teenage Fré, a boy from a comfortable middle-class background who lives in the suburbs but spends his days hanging with a group of friends from a run-down city housing project. One day, inevitably, the barrier between his two worlds comes crashing down and he is left to make the choice between bourgeois comfort - “I think we should stop ordering the organic groceries” are his father’s first words in the film - and street cred.

Copain didn’t start out as a short: the idea for the film came as the brothers worked at developing a feature, with the tentative working title of Franco. “The short film is about a guy who is stuck between these two worlds or thinks he is - and has to make a decision,” says Raf. “For us, the film stops when he makes that decision.

It’s like a segment of the

KEBAB ROYAL A scene from Kebab Royal, the new dramatic comedy from Venice Lion-winners Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens, which wrapped on July 4 after shooting in Brussels, Istanbul and Bulgaria. A BelgianDutch-Bulgarian co-production, Kebab Royal is a road movie about Nicolas II, the last King of the Belgians, who gets lost in the Balkans.

The King (Peter Van den Begin) is on a symbolic mission to Istanbul with British filmmaker Duncan Lloyd (Pieter van der Houwen), who has been hired by the palace to polish the image of the King. But, while he is away, Wallonia declares independence and the King no longer has a Kingdom.

Rushing home to fulfill his only true royal duty - the demanding task of keeping Belgium united - Nicolas is hit by a solar storm which shuts down airspace and all forms of communication. Thus begins the King’s odyssey across the Balkans and a series of marvellous encounters, instances of mayhem and moments of grace.

The film is due for release next year. ď Š

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Kebab Royal on flandersimage.com

i-opener

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INTO

THE WOODS TEXT NICK RODDICK PORTRAIT FILIP VAN ROE

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ROBIN PRONT (L) AND JEROEN PERCEVAL

director/writer

PREMIERING IN TORONTO AND CO-WRITTEN BY ACTOR JEROEN PERCEVAL, ROBIN PRONT’S FIRST FEATURE THE ARDENNES INTRODUCES AN EXCITING NEW DIRECTORIAL TALENT AND A STRIKING NEW STRAIN OF FLEMISH FILM NOIR. The first time Jeroen Perceval met Robin Pront, he was already an established actor with a leading role in Felix van Groeningen’s With Friends Like These. Pront was still a film student, albeit a film student with a pretty clear idea of what he wanted. The outcome was a short film called Plan B, in which Perceval plays a coke-addled loser stuck with a drug debt that gets paid off in an unexpected way. Gleefully violent and cut to a rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack ranging from Dion and the Belmonts to the Kinks, Plan B gave Perceval a role that couldn’t be further from the good-natured dreamer he plays in van Groeningen’s film. But it paved the way for characters he went on to play in Bullhead and Borgman, not to mention two further films with Pront: his graduation short Injury Time and The Ardennes, the new film which they wrote together.

“Plan B was my first short film in my third year at Sint-Lukas,” remembers Pront of that first meeting, “and I was looking for an actor who could play the type of character I’d written, because it was pretty specific. I asked around and there was this guy called Jeroen but I never go to the theatre so I didn’t really know him. I saw a film he did with van Groeningen where he played a really different character but I felt he could play my part. Then we met in Brussels and it was love at first sight.”

Perceval recalls being rather more circumspect. “First he had to convince me a little bit,” he says, “but after a few months our relationship developed.” And it was while they were working on Plan B that the first inkling of what would become The Ardennes emerged.

“Were they both a bit of a bad boy when they were younger?

Pront and Perceval laugh and point at each other.

‘He was!’ they say in unison”

THE ARDENNES

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“Actually, we made a movie out of the backstory of the play”

JEROEN PERCEVAL IN THE ARDENNES

just doing it Says Pront: “Jeroen told me this story about two brothers and I was really convinced that there was something there that could be a movie, but it took a while to convince him that I was the right director for it. After the short film it just grew in an organic way and, in the end, I said, ‘I want to make a movie about this’ and he said ‘Just do it’. So that’s how it all came together.”

In between they worked together on another short film, Pront’s graduation piece Injury Time, in which Perceval co-stars with a not-yet-famous Matthias Schoenaerts as a football hooligan so psychopathic he makes his Bullhead character look like Winnie the Pooh. It prefigures The Ardennes in its examination of a male relationship (in the new film, the two men are brothers) in which the gentler of the two (Perceval) is constantly wrongfooted by the violence of the other (played by Kevin Janssens).

Neither film makes any attempt to hide the animosity which exists between the two halves of Belgium, with brothers Dave and Kenny from urban, Flemish-speaking Antwerp finding themselves finally adrift in the rural, French-speaking Ardennes.

“Belgium, especially Flanders, is one big suburb,” says Perceval, “and actually the Ardennes is the only spot in our small country where there are some woods to hide in.”

“It’s the number one location in Belgium where people can go to find different scenery, really different from where they live,” adds Pront. “And I like the fact you take these people who are so intertwined with the city out of their comfort zone.

I like the fact that it’s the place they went as kids and have really good memories of, but right now it becomes like a living hell for them.”

the one that got away

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Kenny is just out of jail, having served time for a burglary in which both brothers were involved but from which Dave got away. In the intervening years, Dave has grown closer to Kenny’s girlfriend Sylvie (a fearless performance by Veerle Baetens), eventually moving in with her. The brothers’ reunion, in other words, is already compromised. Kenny knows nothing about the relationship, but even before he finds out his inability

to control his violent instincts lands them with a major problem.

And the Ardennes seems the obvious place to solve it. Or that was the idea…

“The thing that was the biggest challenge is that it’s really a simple, one-note story,” says Pront. “It’s just one plot line that you follow and it gradually develops. For me, it was always really hard to find a balance between making Kenny someone who’s damaged but for whom you care all the same. We tried to make it a bit layered so Kenny isn’t just an arsehole: that was a big challenge for us.”

“Actually,” adds Perceval, “we both grew up in suburbs around Antwerp where you find these kinds of guys. It’s a bit based on our youthful experiences.” So were they both a bit of a bad boy when they were younger? Pront and Perceval laugh and point at each other. “He was!” they say in unison.

stuck in the 1990s Real life is also to blame for Kenny’s spectacularly ugly haircut, a kind of modified mohican which is apparently known, in Belgium, as a ‘Johnny’. “It’s very 1990’s,” explains Perceval.

“The two brothers are a little bit stuck in that era.”

“I didn’t want him to be a pretty boy,” adds Pront. “We wanted to give him something that immediately said that this guy is a bit off.”

Dave, who sports a rather less attention-grabbing No 1 haircut, has always lived in his brother’s shadow but managed to create a life for himself when Kenny was in jail. All that is threatened when Kenny gets out. For all Dave’s efforts to find his brother a job and live a normal life, Kenny succeeds in screwing everything up. Dave’s good intentions never had a chance. “Essentially,” says Pront, “he’s just a good guy stuck in a world where there are not a lot of good guys.”

The two brothers remain joined at the hip - something Pront emphasises by framing them side-by-side whenever possible.

“If one brother is talking, then you should see the reaction of the other,” he says. “I did a lot of two-shots. It had to be a bit claustrophobic, because the brothers are always together,

Jeroen Perceval on flandersimage.com Jeroen Perceval on imdb.com

director/writer

The Ardennes on flandersimage.com

VEERLE BAETENS AND KEVIN JANSSENS IN THE ARDENNES

almost like they’re attached to each other. I didn’t want to give them too much space.”

But there is nothing cramped or claustrophobic about The Ardennes as a whole: produced by Bart Van Langendonck of Savage Film (Bullhead), it is a full-on action thriller with a breathless beginning and an almost apocalyptic ending. It’s hard, in fact, to tell that the original source is a stage play. “That’s the big difference between the film and the stage play,” says Pront. “The play was all in one place, one spot: not a lot of action but a lot of dialogue. The whole thing was set in the woods, and we decided that, if we wanted it translated to film, we had to establish the characters in the city first. So the big decision then was, when do they actually go to the woods? When we first started they went real early but gradually it got later and later.”

a violent climax “Actually,” says Perceval, “we made a movie out of the backstory of the play.” That backstory is, of course, the burglary that goes wrong. Pront shot the whole sequence but reluctantly ended up not using it (see also the comments of Ardennes editor Alain Dessauvage on page 41). “It’s a great scene,” says the director, “but it slowed things down a bit and I think it’s more intriguing that you never know what happened: you know that something went wrong but you never know what and it makes the mystery bigger. Right now, the movie starts with a bang and it keeps on moving, but it was a really hard decision to make because I loved that scene - and it was also really expensive!”

The Ardennes ends with a bang, too, with a series of scenes which are pretty much what we’ve come to expect from Pront.

“I wrote a version where Dave and Kenny just said ‘I’m sorry’ and they go to Center Parcs,” deadpans Perceval, “then Robin wrote the rough version. If you‘ve see his short movies, you’ll know he likes violence.”

“I think that the only possible outcome of the story was going to be violent because that’s how the brothers grew up,“ says Pront.

“I love violence in movies when it’s done well. It’s a slow-burning story, so with the climax you want to get what you paid for:

JEROEN PERCEVAL (TOP), JAN BIJVOET (L) AND KEVIN JANSSENS IN THE ARDENNES

you want to see why you’ve been watching this movie and I think it comes together pretty well right now.”

Having collaborated with Pront on the screenplay for The Ardennes (his first feature credit), Perceval recently made his directorial debut with a moody short called August; worked with fellow actors Steve Aernouts and Ellen Schoenaerts on the collectively directed (but as yet unreleased) Liebling; and starred in Raf Reyntjens’s Paradise Trips. And he shows no sign of slowing down. Perceval spent the summer writing a feature film which he plans to direct himself, after that acting in Fien Troch’s new film Home and also in a TV series.

As for his own future plans, Pront is characteristically laconic. “I’ve made my movie, so I can tick that off my bucket list,” he says. “I’m just going to lay back and chill, man, and sip cocktails all day.”

As if. 

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BROTHER

OUT OF LAW

TEXT NICK RODDICK PORTRAIT JOHAN JACOBS

WITH HIS DISTINCTIVE HAIRCUT, KENNETH IN THE ARDENNES IS ONE SCARY GUY A WALKING TIME-BOMB EVEN HIS BROTHER DAVE CAN’T DEFUSE. BUT KEVIN JANSSENS WHO PLAYS THE ROLE INSISTS HE’S A DOWN-TO-EARTH PERSON.

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It is two days after the triumphant Toronto premiere of The Ardennes, the dark Flemish thriller in which Kevin Janssens plays one of the two lead roles: a tough guy who has served time and is trying clumsily to go straight. Summer lasts longer in Toronto and the tattooed Janssens, wearing a singlet, could almost be in character - if he wasn’t grinning amiably and answering questions politely… And if the weather outside wasn’t totally different from the snowy forest in which the final, explosive scenes of The Ardennes are set.

Janssens admits that the shoot was a tough one and that Kenneth, the character he plays, is a demanding role: a hair-trigger psychopath whose downward spiral is made all the more tragic by the fact that, deep inside, he knows he’s majorly messing up.

“Characters like Kenny are very three-dimensional,” he says, and quite unlike anything he has done before. “Missing Persons Unit [the Flemish TV cop show in which Janssens starred]: I had fun doing that, but it wasn’t about my character.

first-hand experience Janssens also admits that, having grown up in the suburbs of Antwerp - where Kenny and his brother Dave (played by Jeroen Perceval, interviewed on page 12), also come from - he has known lots of Kennies in his time. “I used to hang out with guys like that - the fucked-up guys who didn’t get any chances in life,” he says. “Robin [the director] and I talked a lot about the part; about the way he talks, the way he moves, the way he thinks.”

But Janssens is absolutely adamant that he isn’t Kenny. “Every day you take it home with you a bit,” he concedes, “because you’re rehearsing the scenes, learning your lines. But not in a psychological way - not like ‘Oh my god, I don’t know who I am anymore!’ It’s still acting, you know? We’re actors.”

Janssens trained at drama school in Antwerp. Ironically, his first project after leaving was a play written by Perceval’s uncle, in which he and Perceval played brothers. Since then, he has divided his time between the stage (his next project is the title role in a revival of Albert Camus’s Caligula), television and movies. His roles are those of a professional actor hapless travelling salesman in Madonna’s Pig; no-nonsense cop in Missing Persons Unit; gay financial trader in TV series The Divine Monster - with no hint of type-casting. The writer writes, the director directs; he acts.

only believe “I’m a down-to-earth guy,” he insists, “and I’m happy that I can do a lot of different things. But I don’t really have a style.

I try to be authentic in every way and I have to believe in myself every time.”

But he does prefer doing movies: that, he says, is where he feels most at home. “I really like theatre because you go back to the basics with a real connection with the audience. But with film you can create an environment, a world of imagination, and show it on a big screen. I feel more comfortable doing movies.

That’s my greatest passion.”

Strangely enough, it was in the theatre that Pront first thought about him for the role - strangely enough because the director rarely misses an opportunity to say how much he hates theatre.

But the two already knew one another. “I met Robin a few years ago at a party,” says the actor. “He sent me his short movies and I was really blown away by them. Then we met again and we talked about The Ardennes and the rest is history.”

In the film, co-written by Pront and Perceval, Kenny is just out of jail; his brother Dave is about to move in with Kenny’s girlfriend (Veerle Baetens) but can’t bring himself to tell him. Discomfort gives way to anger, anger to violence and, before long there is a corpse in the back of the car and the bothers are heading south to the Ardennes.

talent watch

It was about the victims. It’s more like informational acting. But in every part you play, you have to be authentic and try to find a way to let the character breathe.”

a ticking time-bomb “That’s the explosive nature of Kenny,” says Janssens. “On the surface, he’s laughing; but inside he’s a ticking time-bomb. He’s very unpredictable - which is what makes him scary. You feel that every time someone says something, he could explode.”

Dave tries to help, but the two brothers are never quite on the same page, a point reflected by Pront’s decision to shoot most of their dialogue scenes with the two of them seated side by side, facing front. “That’s what Robin tried to do in the movie - show that they never really communicate with each other,” says Janssens. “When they’re sitting in a car, it’s shot with a window between them. There is always a great distance between the brothers.”

Toronto is Janssens’s first major festival premiere and he is still on a high from the experience. “Everybody was like really ecstatic about the whole thing,” he says. “They asked questions about how I tried to make the character work, how I did my research and stuff.” But he refuses to be drawn on whether the film’s success will launch him internationally, as happened with Matthias Schoenaerts after the Berlinale screening of Bullhead.

“Would I like to do that? It depends on what happens.

It depends on what comes on my path,” he says. “I’m happy to do what I do now and if there’s any interest, we’ll see. It’s a very dull answer, I know, but I want to grow as an actor: keep on growing, keep on discovering myself in things I can play and can do.”

Meanwhile, in the short term, he and Perceval and Pront are heading south to New York, not to take meetings but to have fun (they’ve got tickets for the Jimmy Fallon Show) and see what’s on Broadway.

Maybe Pront doesn’t really hate theatre that much after all.  The Ardennes on flandersimage.com

KEVIN JANSSENS WITH VEERLE BAETENS (L) AND JEROEN PERCEVAL IN THE ARDENNES

17

talent watch

STILL CRAZY

VEERLE BAETENS TALKS ABOUT THE CHARACTERS SHE HAS RECENTLY PLAYED FROM THE ARDENNES VIA A CREEPY TV SERIES TO ONE SHE HAS WRITTEN FOR HERSELF. TEXT NICK RODDICK

Back home in Belgium after shooting two movies and a TV series in French, actress Veerle Baetens is enjoying the calm before the storm. In the month after we speak, she will start filming Tabula rasa from a screenplay she co-wrote with Malin-Sarah Gozin (Clan) and Christophe Dirckx (The Misfortunates). And then there is the small matter of a sold-out concert at the legendary Olympia in Paris on October 12 by the bluegrass band that continues to play long after The Broken Circle Breakdown - the film from which it takes its name - folded up its tent.

“We played a bit in France over the summer- in Lyon and in Brittany,” she says, “and we have a little concert the night before the Olympia, a secret place like a pop-up venue with no reservations. I’m looking forward to it all, but I’m a little bit scared.”

The songs will be in English, representing one of a trio of languages between which Baetens has been alternating since she made her international breakthrough with The Broken Circle Breakdown. She spoke English in BBC TV series The White Queen; Flemish in TV series Cordon and The Team, plus features Halfway, The Verdict, Breakdown and The Ardennes; then French in Emma Luchini’s Un début prometteur; Dominik Moll’s Des nouvelles de la planète Mars; and Arte series Au-delà des murs.

her transformed into a blonde-tressed waitress working in a sleazy bar, torn between two bothers neither of whom has, to be honest, much to offer. Sylvie is quintessential tough Baetens, cousin to Alabama, dealt a lousy hand and playing it with grim determination to squeeze whatever she can out of it.

Working with a director whose feature debut it is didn’t worry her at all. “I need to feel that the director will pull out all the stops to make his film, and Robin [Pront] sure did,” she says. “Anyway, I like to work with first-time directors: they mostly approach projects with an open mind and are full of ideas.”

a bigger choice

a touch of melancholy

The French seem to have taken to Baetens in a big way (the Olympia concert sold out more or less overnight), but she has no intention of moving there. Nor is language a big factor in deciding what she does.

“It’s just that I have a bigger choice,” says the actress. “I have more projects presented to me so I can go ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter what language it is in, but does the character interest me? Does the film and the people who’ve written it interest me? Are they going to shoot it in an interesting way?’”

‘Interesting’ doesn’t quite do justice to the range of projects Baetens has tackled of late. The Ardennes - already extensively covered elsewhere in this issue - sees

The character of Sylvie was similarly intriguing. “She immediately appealed to me,” says Baetens. “I love characters who are a bit crazy, with a touch of melancholy and a bit of rock ‘n’ roll.” But she is also highly vulnerable, yearning for a normal life. “There’s a scene in which she says ‘All I want is to be fucking boring, come home from work at five,

VIVIANE DE MUYNCK (L) AND VEERLE BAETENS IN THE ARDENNES

18

PORTRAIT IVAN RUK

talent watch

cook potatoes, watch TV and ask my man how was his day at work’. It makes you understand who she really is.”

In the more recent films, we have seen quite a bit of this side of Baetens.

“All my characters are crazy,” she admits, only half-joking. In Un début prometteur, she plays a weirdo who lives in her car, making her living gambling at dog tracks.

In Moll’s film, she is also very much of an outsider, playing a nervy vegan who shies away from physical contact.

Working with Moll - for whose films Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien and Lemming she has great respect was a little unusual at first she admits, since he believes in sticking exactly to the script. “But we had a really nice chat before we started and I have to say that if the script is that good, I don’t tend to make suggestions - especially when it’s a French movie, of course, because it’s not my language!”

along came arte With the Moll movie complete (it shot in the early spring of 2015), Baetens intended to spend the summer working on Tabula rasa. “I wasn’t going to take on any work,” she says, “because I wanted to focus on the film that I’ve cowritten. Then, all of a sudden, something came into my mailbox and, when I started reading it, I was hooked. It has horror elements in it and my character is so freaking interesting. She doesn’t talk much, so my French isn’t so important.

She inherits a house from a guy she doesn’t know. She moves in and she hears stuff behind the walls, so she goes behind the wall and then has difficulty getting back…”

Entitled, appropriately enough, Audelà des murs (Beyond the Walls), it is a three-part series for Franco-German cultural channel Arte. “What was also really nice was that I was playing with Géraldine Chaplin, and that was ‘Wow!’..

It clicked well: I really like her and I really like her work.”

Now, however, the decks are cleared for Tabula rasa, insists Baetens, reaching across a cluttered work table to brandish four neatly bound drafts.

This time, her character really is crazy - certifiably so. “It’s about a woman who wakes up in a secure mental institution with amnesia,” she explains. “She doesn’t know why she’s there and she doesn’t know what’s happening. Then a police inspector comes in and says she was the last person to be seen with a man who has gone missing. Until she finds out where this guy is, she will never get out of the asylum.

But she doesn’t have a clue who he is!”

It is, admits Baetens, a complex and challenging story very, very loosely inspired

by Memento. But it comes as no surprise that a character she created (along with Gozin and Dirckx) with the sole intention of writing a role for herself to play should be… well, a little bit crazy. 

Veerle Baetens on imdb.com

19

The Ardennes on flandersimage.com

WHAT IF..?

WRITER/DIRECTOR LUKAS BOSSUYT MAY HAVE DONE SOME OF HIS RESEARCH BY READING STEPHEN HAWKING’S A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME . BUT HE INSISTS HIS FILM, SUM OF HISTORIES , IS FIRST AND FOREMOST A LOVE STORY.

20

TEXT NICK RODDICK PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

director

Time is one of the themes of Lukas Bossuyt’s debut feature, Sum of Histories. And time - quite a lot of it played a part in the film’s genesis: it’s 16 years since his graduation short Strawberry Flavour, and almost a decade since he first sat down at his kitchen table to map out what would become Sum of Histories. In between came a lot of commercials - “I graduated in December 1999 from the London Film School,” he says, “and I made my first commercial in January!” - and a lot of research.

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time gets referenced quite a lot as he explains the theme of his feature, which hops about in time, and Bossuyt has become adept at explaining something called the ‘Casimir Effect’. But the director is at pains to point out that his film is not mainstream sci-fi and even less an exploration of philosophical complexities. It is, he insists, basically a fun movie which happens to have some serious ideas behind it. “I wanted to write a script that was challenging for me structure-wise: if you go with timejumps, it’s a challenge. I was looking at that kind of area of film but it didn’t come from any philosophical angle.”

If anything, he says, “it’s about love.

One of the films that definitely inspired me is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s not sci-fi but I like the idea of time and I wanted to make it realistic.

Stephen Hawking said it’s possible that microscopic things can go back in time. For me, the film lets you think ‘What if’ this or that had just gone a little differently… if I had talked to that person a long time ago - or not talked to her, because she’s now my wife? That’s the theme. And it’s one that’s essential in finding a balance in your life: accepting that chance is part of it.”

an email back in time The film is set in two time periods: now (or sort of); and 25 years in the future.

In the future, a researcher finds a way of sending an email back in time in such a way that it will change crucial events, including a death that occurs during an

21

KOEN DE GRAEVE (L) AND ROBRECHT VANDEN THOREN IN SUM OF HISTORIES

22

ecological protest. To reveal more would take a lot of the fun out of a film which is basically emotional but propelled by a puzzle based around the words ‘What if..?’ It’s about how one little detail can change the course of history.

Bossuyt’s own career seems to have had very little to do with chance. Nor could he be said to have been dazzled as a youngster by the prospect of a life in film. “When I was 17, I wanted to study engineering! I liked films and saw lots of them and made home movies like everybody, I guess. But it was only when I was 20, with Reservoir Dogs, that I really started thinking about studying film.”

Which is why, in a roundabout way, he ended up in London. ”I looked at Belgian film schools,” he says, “but there, everybody is 18 and it’s a four-year course. By the time I graduated I was 23 and I didn’t feel like doing another four years because there’s a big gap between 18 and 23. In London, the average age of people on my course was 23, 24, 25 and it was a two-year course, completely practical. I liked the handson experience.”

spare-time scriptwriting Bossuyt started writing Sum of Histories in 2006, after five years of working pretty much full time on commercials, with his spare time spent on another script that ended up going nowhere. “I graduated in 1999,” he says, “and I started writing a script about young people - a romantic comedy. I worked on it for a couple of years - I have a draft, about 70 pages - but in 2005 I ditched it because I knew it was never going to be good enough: it was just an exercise. Professionally, I made commercials, but from 2008-09 I started writing scripts. The first draft of this feature was finished around the beginning of 2008, which is when people from the industry started reading the draft and telling me I could write dialogue.”

At this point, Sum of Histories entered what is euphemistically known as ‘development’.

“It just takes so long finding finance,” says Bossuyt ruefully. “It’s funny looking back; I was so naïve. I’d have a meeting and say ‘OK, when do we start shooting?’ Which is when they said, ‘Yes, we definitely want to make this film. We think the script has lots of potential but we’re not sure you’re the one to direct it because we don’t know you yet; you haven’t made a first feature’. But no way would I let anybody else direct it! I know as a first time director it’s the only way to get in - or go through TV, and that’s not my thing.”

we have to have polleke The film wrapped almost exactly a year ago (September 2014) as a co-production with the Netherlands, produced for Flanders by Frank Van Passel and Ivy Vanhaecke of Caviar, with Koen De Graeve and Karina Smulders as the adult protagonists and an extraordinary performance from (then) seven-year-old Polleke van der Sman as the young Lena. “She’s Dutch,” says Bossuyt. “They’ve got 18 or 19 million people and we’re only six million, so there are more actresses there! We saw nine or 10 girls, but our casting agent said ‘We have to have Polleke. She’s amazing’. She’s one big heap of energy. I’ve heard lots of stories from fellow filmmakers about how everything

choosing your future The film’s portrayal of the future is likewise distilled from modern reality rather than taken from some futurologist’s scrapbook. There are some neat transparent handheld devices (a design Apple might like to take a look at) and… no cars. “I did quite a bit of research on how the future might look,” says the director. “I didn’t want any cars in the film because what would they look like? I went to see lots of people in industry about their visions of the future and they all said, ‘You have to decide: do you want a positive view or a negative view?’ Energy will be very scarce, so either the light will go out the second you leave the room or they will find alternatives and there will be more energy available. I think my view is positive and green.”

Even so, insists the director, the film is playful rather than philosophical. “It’s about destiny and stuff. Initially, that’s the hook.”

With the film now ready for release, Bossuyt is doing his best to escape from the pressures of time past, present or for that matter future to work on a new screenplay.

“On Sunday I go away to the seaside to an apartment, just me, for four days - what do you call it? - a retreat,” he says. “I have ideas for a script but I’m still looking for the hook. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that time and distance make all the difference. I know I’m not going to finish this in six months; I need time.

“But I don’t think I will do many more commercials. Now that I’ve been out of it for a year and a half, it would take a lot of energy to get back in there, and I want to channel that energy into directing other fiction or screenwriting. Commercials are still fun because they’re short and they’re quick, but the longer projects attract me more now.” 

director

went well in rehearsals but on the set, for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. That’s not what happened with Polleke: it was like she’d done it for years, and she was only seven.”

The Flemish title for Sum of Histories is Terug naar morgen, which translates as ‘Back to Tomorrow’. Bossuyt rejected a straight translation for the English title because of the echoes it brought with it of a certain series of cult movies starring Michael J Fox and a DeLorean car. The director also wanted to play down the sci-fi angle so that the human story registered more strongly - something which was made easier by the fact that what happens in the film is, if not factual, at any rate feasible. “Out of all the sci-fi films, this one is not so far from reality,” he insists. And the theory that sounds most outlandish when it is first mentioned in the film - the ‘Casimir Effect’, named after a Dutch scientist called Hendrik Casimir, is firmly anchored in science, not sci-fi.

Sum of Histories on flandersimage.com

“It’s about destiny and stuff. Initially, that’s the hook” KARINA SMULDERS AND KOEN DE GRAEVE IN SUM OF HISTORIES

23

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Robin Pront, l’oeuvre au noir

PAR Alain Lorfèvre PHOTO FILIP VAN ROE

Deux frères, une femme, Anvers et les Ardennes belges : pour son premier long métrage, Robin Pront signe un road-movie dans la veine de ses courts métrages, haletant, nerveux et délicieusement sombre, que le Festival International de Toronto a présenté en première mondiale en septembre dernier.

Robin Pront

.1

« Aussi loin que je me souvienne, j’ai toujours voulu être un artiste. » Robin Pront paraphrase presque malgré lui Henry Hill, le mafieux incarné par Ray Liotta dans Les Affranchis (1990) de Martin Scorsese. Clin d’oeil inconscient à un des réalisateurs favoris du jeune réalisateur flamand. « Mon père était livreur pour Warner Belgique.

A la maison, nous avions une vidéothèque gigantesque dans notre cave. J’y ai pioché très vite des films de réalisateurs remarquables.

J’ai eu la chance de me construire une culture cinématographique éclectique très tôt. Je serai incapable de dire quand m’est venue l’envie de devenir réalisateur,

mais vers l’âge de quinze ou seize ans, je savais que je suivrais cette voie. » Première étape de son parcours : des études à l’Académie SintLukas à Bruxelles, où il signe deux courts métrages remarqués, Plan B (2008) et Injury Time (2010). Ce dernier, dont les rôles principaux étaient tenus par Jeroen Perceval et Matthias Schoenaerts, est en quelque sorte une lointaine matrice de D’Ardennen (Les Ardennes), son premier long métrage qui ne devrait pas laisser indifférents la critique et le public. Injury Time mettait en scène deux hooligans flamands lancés dans une cavale vengeresse contre des supporters wallons interview

jamais si le spectateur ne pouvait pas s’attacher un minimum à cette fille », confesse Robin Pront.

Problème : Pront n’avait jamais écrit de personnage féminin. Pour s’aider, il a pensé à une actrice qu’il aimerait diriger. Et il a tout naturellement pensé à Veerle Baetens (Alabama Monroe). « Ce qui m’a évidemment poussé à développer correctement le personnage de Sylvie : il fallait que cela devienne un rôle digne de Veerle, si on souhaitait qu’elle

Schoenaerts tenait le rôle de la bête furieuse forçant la main de son frère d’arme joué par Perceval. « Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais j’aime les personnages de mecs pas très futés, un peu bas du front. Il y a quelque chose qui résonne en moi. » UNE CAVALE SIDÉRANTE D’Ardennen, produit par le très éclectique Bart Van Langendonck et sa société Savage Film, met cette fois en scène des frères de sang.

Kenny (Kevin Janssens) sort de prison où il a purgé une peine suite à un cambriolage dramatique. Son jeune frère Dave (Jeroen Perceval), dont Kenny a tu la participation au délit, est aussi pondéré que Kenny est un chien fou. Incontrôlable et soupçonnant son ex-petite amie Sylvie (Veerle Baetens) d’avoir un nouveau fiancé, Kenny va entraîner Dave dans une nouvelle cavale, sidérante, aux fin fond des Ardennes belges.

D’Ardennen a été co-écrit avec Jeroen Perceval, éclectique acteur flamand - il jouait l’ami d’enfance homosexuel de Matthias Schoenaerts dans Rundskop (Bullhead en France, 2012) de Michaël R. Roskam - qui vient luimême de signer un premier court métrage, August. « Jeroen et moi nous nous connaissons depuis longtemps.

La collaboration à l’écriture fut assez naturelle. A l’origine, le interview

scénario était essentiellement un road-movie, centré sur la partie ardennaise. J’ai apporté à Jeroen tout un volet portant sur le passé de Kenny et Dave. De fil en aiguille, nous en avons conclu qu’il convenait d’ouvrir le film avec une partie plus importante précédent le cavale ardennaise. » En développant cette première partie du film et les relations entre les trois protagonistes principaux, Robin Pront a aussi intégré dans D’Ardennen un important volet urbain qui lui est cher. « J’aime tous les types de cinéma et je ne souhaite pas, comme réalisateur, être cantonné à un genre. Mais j’aime les films noirs et j’ai toujours aimé les films se déroulant dans les grandes villes, notamment New York, que j’aime autant à travers les oeuvres de Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese ou Woody Allen… »

Son New York à lui est Anvers - dont il explorait déjà les bas -fonds minés par la drogue dans son court métrage Plan B. Cette peinture de la métropole portuaire, entre la petite maison ouvrière de la mère de Kenny et Dave, les travées enfiévrées des boîtes de nuit et l’atmosphère oppressante des parkings de béton, offre un contraste saisissant avec la brume et la bruine des forêts ardennaises de la deuxième partie.

TIERCÉ GAGNANT Partant, le réalisateur acquit aussi la conviction qu’il était nécessaire de développer le personnage de Sylvie. « Elle est l’enjeu tabou entre les deux frères. Mais, en gros, elle ne restait pratiquement qu’un nom, une silhouette, peu caractérisée.

On buttait tout le temps sur Sylvie.

Je me disais que ça ne marcherait

l’accepte ! » - ce qui n’a pas manqué d’être le cas.

Pour les deux frères, « il a toujours été acquis que Jeroen incarnerait Dave » confirme Robin Pront. Ce n’est pas trahir un secret que de rappeler que, dans le prolongement de Injury Time, Kenny fut écrit en pensant à Matthias Schoenaerts.

Mais le rôle a finalement échu, en un remarquable contre-emploi, à Kevin Janssens (vu notamment dans Zot van A. de Jan Verheyen ou Le cochon de Madonna de Frank Van Passel), ce dont le réalisateur se réjouit. « Je crois que peu de gens s’attendent à voir Kevin dans un tel rôle et j’en suis ravi, parce qu’il livre une composition remarquable. » Avec Baetens, Perceval et Janssens, Pront tient en tout cas un tiercé de comédiens flamands en pleine maîtrise de leur art. L’équipe technique agrège aussi d’autres .2

« J’aime les films noirs et j’ai toujours aimé les films se déroulant dans les grandes villes, notamment New York, que j’aime autant à travers les oeuvres de Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese ou Woody Allen… »

nouvelles valeurs sûres du cinéma flamand - outre Pront lui-même.

Le directeur de la photographie Robrecht Heyvaert a réalisé un début de carrière remarqué, participant entre autres au court métrage Baghdad Messi (2012) de Salim Omar Kalifa, qui a remporté plus de cinquante prix internationaux ou aux deux premiers longs métrages d’Adil El Arbi et Bilall Fallah, Images (2014) et Black (2015).

Mais Robin Pront peut s’enorgueillir de l’avoir découvert : « Lorsque je préparais mon premier court métrage, Plan B, j’ai contacté par mail une cinquantaine d’étudiants ou jeune directeurs de la photo.

Parmi les deux seuls qui m’ont répondu, il y avait Robrecht.

Le contact est tout de suite passé, parce qu’on partage une même culture cinématographique de base. » Robrecht Heyvaert, en outre, .3

gèrerait bien les interactions avec le réalisateur, qui confesse lui-même être « direct », voire « brutal » dans le feu du tournage.

L’APPORT DE LA MUSIQUE Un autre apport marquant à D’Ardennen est la musique d’Hendrik Willemyns, du groupe fusion Arsenal. « Je suis étonné que personne n’aie encore fait appel à ses compositions. Nous avons la chance d’avoir en Belgique, et en Flandre en particulier, une scène musicale très riche et talentueuse.

C’est une ressource géniale pour un réalisateur. » C’est au montage que s’est opérée l’alchimie entre la musique de Willemyns et le film de Pront. « Alain Dessauvage, mon monteur, et moi avions une playlist d’une trentaine de morceaux. On puisait dedans. Alain connait bien le travail d’Arsenal. Il a fait des

propositions qui se sont avérées parfaites. » Récompensé en 2012 du Magritte du cinéma du meilleur montage pour Rundskop, Dessauvage complète le générique bourré de talents du décoiffant D’Ardennen.

Pour Robin Pront, ce premier périple touche à sa fin. « C’est presque frustrant » confesse-t-il. « Parce que tout est fini, on ne peut plus revenir en arrière. Le film est là et il va rencontrer le public. On ne maîtrise plus rien. » Une première expérience qui s’avère positive pour le jeune réalisateur. « Bien sûr, on a affronté pas mal d’écueils. C’est le lot de tous les films. Il y a des moments où on se demande ce qu’on est venu faire dans une telle galère.

On est dans l’incertitude, l’insécurité. Mais il faut avancer, faire des choix, trancher, prendre des décisions. C’est ça qui est intéressant dans le processus d’un film. » Robin Pront nourrit déjà plusieurs autres idées de récit. Même s’il ne veut pas trop s’avancer sur celui qui prendra le dessus dans l’immédiat.

Une seule certitude : son désir de cinéma est encore plus grand après D’Ardennen qu’avant.

D'Ardennen sur flandersimage.com Jeroen sur flandersimage.com Jeroen Perceval sur imdb.com Veerle Baetens sur imdb.com

Photos : D’Ardennen

interview

ENFANTS DE LA GUERRE PAR

Pieter-Jan De Pue (d)

Le réalisateur Pieter-Jan De Pue a longtemps oeuvré en solitaire en Afghanistan, où il a accompagné l’armée américaine et travaillé avec des ONG. Avec The Land of the Enlightened, il a trouvé une histoire puissante à conter. Son film se situe à mi-chemin entre réalité et fiction.

Impossible de se tromper de PieterJan De Pue sur Skype : c’est celui dont l’adresse indique « Kaboul, Afghanistan ». En réalité, De Pue n’est plus à Kaboul lorsque nous nous parlons : il met actuellement la touche finale à son documentaire, The Land of the Enlightened. Mais le réalisateur a passé l’essentiel de la dernière décennie dans ce pays lointain et bouleversé, où les invasions se sont succédées et dont la beauté des paysages contrastes avec la vie rude de la majorité des habitants, notamment les jeunes trafiquants interview

qui sont au coeur de son film. « Nous jouons beaucoup de ce contraste » explique De Pue. « La beauté de l’Afghanistan est le reflet inversé de la dure réalité qu’affrontent ces gamins pour survivre. Nous avons organisé une projection-test récemment. Tout le monde nous a dit : « Je ne savais pas que l’Afghanistan est un pays aussi beau et extraordinaire. » Mais la population doit y vivre au jour le jour. Selon moi, cela apporte une plus-value au film, un contraste supplémentaire.»

Les jeunes en question, qui ont entre

Nick Roddick

traduction Alain Lorfèvre

15 et 18 ans, vivent de l’héritage des guerres du pays, déterrant des mines datant de l’invasion soviétique dans les années 1980, et dont ils retirent les explosifs pour les vendre aux exploitants des mines de lapis-lazuli dans le province du Badahshan, dans le nord-est de l’Afghanistan. Mais la piste ne s’arrête pas là : bien que cette pierre précieuse constitue l’une des principales exportations du pays, une grande quantité sont transférées illégalement vers le Pakistan et la Chine. Elles y sont échangées contre des armes, qui alimentent la dernière métastase de cette guerre dont sont issues les mines. Il est difficile de se défaire de l’idée que l’histoire ne cesse de se répéter en Afghanistan.

CHANGER LES PLANS « L’exploitation minière existe depuis des milliers d’années » précise De Pue. « On trouve des gèmes en Egypte, dans les pyramides. C’était une valeur marchande du temps de la Route de la Soie. L’armée rouge essaya de bombarder une des mines où nous avons tourné.

Mais ce faisant, ils ont mis à jour d’autres veines de lapis lazuli, ce qui n’a fait qu’intensifier le trafic! » L’Afghanistan étant un lieu où il est extrêmement difficile de tourner, explique De Pue, « l’histoire a évolué durant le tournage et nous avons dû beaucoup adapter. Mais le fil conducteur est resté le même : la guerre entre l’armée américaines et les Talibans, et comment différents groupes d’enfants ont développé une activité économique et un moyen de survie au sein de celle-ci.

Ils participent au trafic, ramassent les débris - munitions usagées ou non - et les revendent. C’est un

réseau tentaculaire de trafics et de commerce - une véritable économie de guerre. » Dans une telle économie, la prise de risque et l’ingéniosité font partie du quotidien. « De jour, les enfants des villageois observent les équipes de déminage, essayant de déterminer le plan de disposition des mines.

Ensuite, quand les démineurs sont partis, ils commencent à déterrer les mines et d’autres types d’explosifs et les vendent aux exploitations minières qui les utilisent pour mettre à jour les minerais. Nous avons poursuivi notre récit en montrant comment les pierres traversent la frontière et sont vendues contre des armes, qui reviennent en Afghanistan pour équiper les Talibans. » Tout cela se passe, dit-il, sous les yeux du gouvernement afghan, qui soutient tacitement le trafic. « Tout est corrompu et chacun fait ce qu’il veut. Dès qu’il y a une opportunité de réaliser un bénéfice, chacun coopère avec les autres… même le gouvernement : les seigneurs de guerre sont soutenus par les autorités, afin de maintenir leur pouvoir grâce à l’influence qu’ils ont dans leur région. C’est totalement illégal, mais comme cela se passe partout, tout le monde l’accepte… » LA DIGNITÉ DE LA POPULATION De Pue est fasciné par l’Afghanistan depuis ses études de cinéma, en Belgique. « C’’était en 2001-2002, après l’intervention américaine » se souvient-il. « Je suivais les infos et je parlais beaucoup avec les journalistes belges qui travaillaient avec la [chaîne flamande] VRT, en particulier Jef Lambrecht, qui a écrit un livre sur le sujet. J’ai commencé à lire beaucoup sur ce pays. .4

J’ai été séduit par la culture, par le mode de vie des gens, leur dignité. J’ai alors décidé qu’après mes études, je partirai là-bas afin de découvrir moi-même à qui ressemblait l’Afghanistan. » « Mais c’est évidemment un pays où on ne voyage pas comme un touriste. Alors j’ai contacté plusieurs organisations internationales pour proposer mes services bénévoles afin de couvrir comme photographe leurs projets. En échange, je demandais de pouvoir utiliser leurs véhicules et leurs guides locaux.

Ensuite, l’année suivante, j’ai beaucoup voyagé par mes propres moyens, en moto, à cheval, à pieds... Ce fut aussi à ce momentlà que j’ai suivi comme journaliste « embedded » avec l’armée américaine. J’ai pu voir en première ligne à quoi ressemblait la guerre en Afghanistan. C’est devenu un élément central du scénario que j’ai commencé à écrire à ce moment-là. » Les choses ont progressé doucement, voire très lentement, jusqu’à devenir The Land of the Enlightened. « J’ai reçu une aide à l’écriture du VAF et j’ai achevé le scénario en 2009-2010, je crois.

Bart Van Langendonck fut associé à partir de 2008, juste après avoir créé Savage Film.

Le Fonds audiovisuel flamand est rapidement monté à bord, de même que Creative Europe. Mais il a fallut ensuite se lancer dans la recherche de longue haleine de subsides supplémentaires. Petit à petit, alors le budget gonflait à mesure que nous prenions conscience des conséquences d’un tournage en Afghanistan, nous avons reçu le soutien de l’Irish Film Board » - le mixage son et la post-production ont eu lieu à Dublin début 2015 « ainsi que du Fonds audiovisuel néerlandais et de la chaîne télé IKON. ZDF-Arte est venu nous soutenir depuis l’Allemagne, et encore la Belgique via des aides du ministère des Affaires étrangères .5

et du tax-shelter. Nous avons finalement entamé le tournage en 2010, pour la première partie avec l’armée américaine. In fine, nous sommes parvenus à réunir près d’un million d’euros - une somme considérable pour un documentaire de nos jours.

LA CHANCE TOURNE COURT La première phase du tournage a aussi impliqué une préparation méticuleuse des scènes de trafics.

De Pue a toujours su qu’elles devraient être recrées, étant donné qu’il aurait été impossible de suivre une réelle opération de trafic. « La partie avec l’armée est cent pour cent documentaire » explique le réalisateur, mais présente un autre des contrastes autour desquels le film est structuré. « Il y a d’une part cette guerre high-tech, avec des hélicoptères et des systèmes de vision nocturne et, d’autre part, ces caravanes qui arpentent les routes de montagnes, de la même manière depuis des millénaires, avant même la route de la soie. » Mais lorsque le groupe - une équipe de quatre Européens et de douze Afghans - a commencé à tourner les scènes autour de la mine, sa chance a tourné court. « Nous avons commis l’erreur d’être trop visible » raconte De Pue. « Tout le monde savait où nous voulions aller. À la fin du tournage, nous avons été attaqués et toute l’équipe a dû être rapatriée en Belgique. » Lorsqu’il est retourné en Afghanistan en 2013, De Pue a adopté une approche plus prudente - et plus efficace - bien qu’engendrant plus de difficultés et d’inconfort. « Je suis resté sur place de janvier à juillet, avec seulement un ingénieur du son et une équipe afghane locale » précise-t-il. « Nous avons pris la décision que, pour chaque lieu que nous voulions filmer, nous aurions une équipe différente. C’étaient des gens qui connaissent très bien chaque région, des directeurs de

productions locaux, des facilitateurs - pas des Afghans de Kaboul qui ne connaissaient rien. Cela signifiait que nous pouvions faire tout ce qui était écrit dans le scénario, mais d’une manière plus flexible, comme tourner dans un champ d’opium pendant quelques heures plutôt qu’en deux jours. » C’EST ÇA L’AFGHANISTAN Tout semblait aller pour le mieux, surtout dès lors que le tournage

dû marcher sept jours sur une rivière gelée pour atteindre le décor que nous souhaitions filmer, et nous avons dû renvoyer la caravane à deux reprises rechercher plus de nourriture, de carburant, de matériel de tournage - même de la nourriture pour les animaux, parce qu’il n’y avait même pas d’herbe. Ensuite la glace est devenue plus mince. Les animaux ont commencé à passer au travers et nous avons dû monter en altitude... » « Ouais » conclut-il Photos : The Land of the Enlightened

« A la fin du tournage, nous avons été attaqué et toute l’équipe a dû être rapatriée en Belgique. » commençait durant l’hiver, alors que les combats diminuaient à cause du froid et des risques d’avalanches. « C’était un tournage rude, cependant, parce que l’Afghanistan, c’est un peu le Moyen-Age, spécialement dans les régions montagneuses : il n’y a ni électricité, ni eau, ni carburant. Vous devez apporter vos propres générateurs, votre propre nourriture. Lorsque nous avons filmé les caravanes, nous tournions à 5000 mètres d’altitude, dans la neige, en plein hiver, avec plus de trente chameaux, des yaks, des chevaux. Nous avons

à regret “nous avons rencontré beaucoup de difficultés. Mais c’est ça l’Afghanistan! » De Pue tente également de trouver un moyen de montrer le film à ceux qui en sont le sujet. « C’est un des grands défis » dit-il. « Durant son occupation, l’armée soviétique projetait des films de propagande dans les montagnes. Je pense que je serait le premier à montrer un film sur l’armée rouge et sur les conséquences de la guerre pour les enfants qui y furent impliqués. » Land of the Enlightened sur flandersimage.com interview

A MATONGE SOUS DES ETOILES CONTRAIRES PAR

NICK RODDICK

TRADUCTION RUD VANDEN NEST PHOTOs

JO VOETS

Aboubakr Bensaïhi (g) et Martha Canga Antonio

Matonge est un quartier de Bruxelles où les gangs urbains font la loi. Mais Black, dans lequel Aboubakr Bensaïhi et Martha Canga Antonio font leurs premiers pas au cinéma, est d’abord et surtout une histoire d'amour.

Martha Canga Antonio, 19 ans, étudie à l’université de Gand.

Grâce à ses parents d’origine angolaise, elle parle le portugais, le français, le néerlandais, ainsi qu’un anglais impeccable.

Aboubakr Bensaïhi, lui aussi 19 ans, étudie à l’Institut Imelda, une école secondaire de Bruxelles. Il parle l’arabe avec sa mère, le français avec son père, le néerlandais à l’école et un anglais bien meilleur qu’il ne l’admet par modestie.

Dans Black, Martha et Aboubakr interprètent les rôles principaux.

Ils n’avaient quasiment aucune expérience de jeu si ce n’est un tout petit rôle à l’école pour Martha, « et encore, dans une comédie musicale, lors d’une apparition de maximum

10 secondes. » Aboubakr abonde dans le même sens, même s’il ajoute: « j’ai toujours rêvé de faire du cinéma. » Ce rêve est devenu réalité l’été dernier quand les deux jeunes gens ont été retenus pour incarner les amants maudits dans le nouveau film du prolifique duo de metteurs en scène, Adil El Arbi et Bilall Fallah.

Il s’agit d’une nouvelle variation sur le thème classique de Roméo & Juliette : tout comme dans West Side Story, les deux amants ne sont pas issus de familles ennemies, mais de gangs rivaux. Martha joue Mavela, membre des « Black Bronx ». Aboubakr incarne Marwan, membre on ne peut plus loyal du gang rival, les « 1080 », dont le nom

renvoie à la commune bruxelloise de Molenbeek. Pour le reste: place à l’amour…

Black est basé sur un roman très populaire en Flandre de Dirk Bracke.

« J’avais lu le livre en décembre 2013 et je l’avais beaucoup aimé, » nous dit Martha. « Après, en janvier, quelqu’un m’a signalé qu’il allait être adapté au cinéma et qu’un

Photos : Black

interview

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casting était en cours. J’ai passé une audition – et j’ai été prise ! » CASTING SAUVAGE Pour trouver leurs jeunes acteurs, les réalisateurs ont mis en place des ateliers et des sessions d’improvisation auxquels ont participé près de 450 personnes sur trois mois. « Il y a eu trois rounds dont deux entièrement axés sur l’improvisation, » se souvient Martha. « Il fallait s’imaginer qu’on attendait le bus et que quelqu’un vous abordait en devenant agressif.

Ensuite on devait jouer quelqu’un qui avait peur et n’osait pas réagir.

Enfin, quelqu’un était le roi de son quartier et n’a peur de personne. » Le personnage qu’elle a fini par interpréter, ajoute-t-elle, ne lui

ressemble pas vraiment, même si elle peut « se retrouver dans certains de ses traits. » Et selon elle, d’autres jeunes filles pourront facilement s’identifier aussi, « c’est ce qui fait la force du livre, parce que c’est l’une des premières fois, en Belgique, que des jeunes filles noires ont pu se reconnaître dans certaines choses, même si elles ne se reconnaissent pas dans tout.

Mavela est très jeune et à son âge on pense qu’on sait plein de choses –mais c’est loin d’être le cas. Elle est aussi un peu frustrée, en colère et naïve. C’est très compliqué de la décrire; je crois qu’il faut aller voir le film. » .7

Les choses ne se sont pas passées de la même manière pour Aboubakr.

Les réalisateurs ont organisé un grand casting dans son école. Les improvisations, par contre, ont été plus ou moins pareilles pour les deux acteurs, puisqu’ils ont été invités à sortir de leur zone de confort pour se glisser dans le monde de la loyauté au gang. « Pour Marwan, » dit-il, « il importe d’être toujours là pour les amis et de ne jamais les abandonner à leur sort. C’est un gars de la rue – ce qui n’est pas mon cas: je ne suis pas de la rue. Il sent qu’il a plein de problèmes avec la police mais, quand on le connaît, on voit bien qu’il a bon cœur. » Et d’ajouter, en grimaçant: « avec les filles, c’est un monstre. »

« Black c’est la deuxième histoire d’amour la plus forte au monde, après Titanic ! » Aboubakr

UN ENDROIT OÙ IL FAIT BON VIVRE Si, pour les deux acteurs, tourner dans les rues de Bruxelles a constitué un défi, ce dernier a cependant été éminemment gratifiant. Loyal à son biotope, Aboubakr n’est pas d’accord avec l’image violente de Bruxelles. « Je suis de Bruxelles et, pour moi, Bruxelles n’est pas une ville dangereuse, c’est une ville agréable, » affirme-t-il. Pour Martha, cependant, le tournage du film a révélé des choses qu’elle n’avait jamais remarquées auparavant. « Je croyais connaître Bruxelles, » dit-elle, « mais ce n’était pas le cas. Le quartier de Matonge, je l’ai

découvert. Or, j’avais l’habitude d’y aller chez le coiffeur parce que les Africains y sont nombreux.

J’y faisais des allers-retours avec ma mère. Mais depuis, je m’y suis arrêtée, j’ai regardé, fait la connaissance de gens du coin et écouté leurs histoires. Ça a été une expérience très enrichissante. » Pour Aboubakr, le tournage du film et tout ce que cela implique, a complètement correspondu à ses attentes. « J’ai vraiment bien aimé l’atmosphère sur le plateau », dit-il. « On était comme une grande famille. Tout le monde respectait tout le monde, même s’il y avait des tas de personnes de cultures différentes qui travaillaient ensemble. C’était super. » Tous les deux disent avoir une prédilection pour le cinéma et les acteurs de films plutôt violents : Martha a un faible pour City of God, film de gangs brésilien, tandis que Aboubakr est fan de l’acteur Jason Statham. Malgré toute la violence présente dans Black, ce sont cependant les aspects les plus tendres du film – et son histoire d’amour en particulier – qui les ont

le plus marqués. Pour Aboubakr, « Black c’est la deuxième histoire d’amour la plus forte au monde, après Titanic ! ». Quand on a fait le film, ajoute Martha, la puissance émotionnelle de l’histoire était « la chose la plus importante de nos vies et la seule à laquelle nous pouvions nous fier. » Sans avoir vu la moindre séquence du film (au moment de l’interview), les deux interprètes sont convaincus que le résultat sera plein de moments émotionnels forts, aussi bien pour eux que pour les spectateurs. « Oh ! » s’exclame Aboubakr, « moi, je vais chialer… » « Et moi donc ! » intervient Martha. « … parce que c’est un rêve devenu réalité. » « On a eu l’impression que c’était bien plus qu’un film, » conclut Martha. « C’était un projet réalisé en commun. Même lorsqu’on était dans la rue et qu’il y avait des badauds… si on avait besoin de quelque chose, tout le monde donnait un coup de main. » Black sur flandersimage.com interview

DOUBLE JE

Jan (g) et Raf Roosens

Après la première cannoise de leur court métrage Copain, les frères Roosens se préparent leur premier long métrage.

En mai, une nouvelle paire de frères belges a emboîté le pas aux Dardenne sur les marches du Palais des Festivals à Cannes. Jan et Raf Roosens ont réalisé la fameuse « montée des marches » grâce à leur court métrage Copain. Celuici a décroché une très convoitée sélection en Compétition dans le programme courts métrages. Et ils sont fermement décidés à fouler à nouveau le même tapis rouge. « C'est une expérience unique », reconnaît Jan, l'aîné (il a 32 ans, Raf a fêté ses 30 ans cet été). « Lorsqu'on nous a dit que nous étions sélectionnés, nous avons interview

PAR

Nick Roddick

TRADUCTION ALAIN LORFÈVRE PHOTO BART DEWAELE

sauté au plafond. Nous nous sommes retrouvés invités à tout un tas d'événements et de dîners exceptionnels, où nous avons rencontré des personnes passionnantes. » Sans compter celles à même de doper une carrière de réalisateurs.

Certes, concède Raf, un prix aurait été bienvenu. « Pendant les dix jours que nous avons passé là-bas, dit-il, nous avons eu notre chance de décrocher la Palme d'or. Lorsque plein de gens vous disent combien ils ont apprécié votre film, vous commencez à vous dire : « OK, la nomination, c'est génial, mais maintenant ce serait encore mieux d'avoir un prix ». « On en veut toujours plus : c'est normal.

Au final, Copain n'a pas décroché la timbale, donc on se dit qu'on doit y retourner ! » En d'autres termes, Copain n'est qu'un début. C'est l'histoire d'un ado aisé, Fré, issu de la classe moyenne.

Il vit en banlieue, mais passe ses journées avec une bande de copains d'une cité. Un jour, inévitablement, la frontière entre ces deux univers saute, et Fré doit faire un choix entre le confort de la vie bourgeoise - « Je crois qu'il faudrait qu'on en finisse avec les produits bio » sont les premiers mots de son père dans le film - et la street attitude.

SUIVRE LA MÊME VOIE Copain n'a pas commencé comme un court métrage. L'idée du film est venue lorsque les frères développaient un projet de long métrage, sous le titre de travail Franco. « Ce court métrage est centré sur un garçon qui est coincé entre ces deux mondes - ou pense qu'il l'est - et qui doit trancher » explique Raf. « Pour nous, l'histoire s'arrête lorsqu'il a fait son choix.

C'est comme un chapitre du long métrage : on y retrouve les mêmes personnages, les mêmes décors. En fait, c'est lors d’une de nos séances de réflexion durant l'écriture du long métrage que l'idée du court métrage a émergé. Le long a pour protagonistes deux frères, dont l'un a toujours veillé sur l'autre, qui se demande s'il doit absolument suivre la même voie que son frère. » Il apparaît que les frères Roosens eux-mêmes n'avaient pas non plus envisagé de suivre la même voie.

Raf est entré dans une école de cinéma alors que Jan avait opté pour des études économiques. « Après mon diplôme, explique-t-il, je suis parti à Paris pendant un an et, lorsque je suis revenu, Raf réalisait son film de fin d'études. Comme j'étais en vacances et que j'avais du temps, je l'ai aidé à produire son film. Ensuite, j'ai commencé à travailler comme courtier en obligations dans la finance. » « Mais nous sommes frères après tout et il parlait tout le temps ce qu'il était en train de faire. Une nuit, on a décidé de lancer notre propre compagnie de production.

J'ai démissionné le lendemain et notre société est née. Au départ, j'étais celui qui tenait les cordons de la bourse, mais la collaboration est devenue plus étroite. » STYLE ROCOCO Leur compagnie, Rococo, a une palette de clients impressionnante.

Son website fourmille de vidéos.

On y trouve la bande annonce du premier court métrage des Roosens, Rotkop (Skunk), où l'on retrouve aussi des gamins qui partent en ville dans le parc d'une cité. Le protagoniste principal doit faire un choix, mais à l'opposé : Olli prend la parti de sa mère, atteinte d'un cancer, au lieu de celui de ses soi-disant amis.

Par chance, les frères Roosens n’ont jamais été confronté à de tels choix cornéliens durant leur parcours. « Quand nous nous sommes lancés,

explique Raf, j’était le réalisateur et Jan répondait « OK, mais voici ce que je pense ». Et ses jugements étaient pertinents. Nous avons donc collaboré étroitement. Pour l’équipe et les comédiens, nous apparaissons comme une seule personne, avec une seule opinion. » DEUX RÉALISATEURS, UNE SEUL VOIX « Le truc », glisse Jan « c'est que nous essayons réellement d'agir comme deux réalisateurs sur le plateau. L'équipe comme les comédiens sentent que nous réalisons main dans la main. Les seuls discussions que nous avons se font derrière le combo. C'est comme cela que ça se passe sur le tournage : on tourne une scène, on regarde la prise, on en parle et puis l'un de nous deux va s'adresser à l'équipe : « OK, la prise n'est pas terrible... peut-être qu'on pourrait essayer un autre angle », ou alors il se tourne vers les comédiens : « Essayez plutôt ceci ». Nous n'avons qu'une seule règle : il ne peut jamais y avoir de veto. » Raf confirme : « Ce qui est capital, c'est que nous essayons d'agir comme un seul réalisateur sur le plateau. » Ce qui, affirme-t-il, se passe naturellement. « Nous aimons vraiment les mêmes choses - le même type d'image, la même manière de raconter une histoire.

Nous sommes vraiment comme une caisse de résonance l'un vis-à-vis de l'autre, et c'est le point de positif dans le fait de travailler ensemble. » Cette collaboration se poursuivra évidemment sur le long métrage, pour lequel ils ont déjà trouvé un producteur potentiel. « En ce sens, Cannes fut vraiment une expérience positive » explique Jan. « Nous avons rencontré de nombreux producteurs, de France et d'ailleurs, mais ce fut également une bonne chose de rencontrer des professionnels de l'industrie du cinéma flamand. » Copain sur flandersimage.com Paradise

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CINEMATEK, FLAGEY & FONDS RAOUL SERVAIS PRESENT

Tank

Raoul Servais, 2015

Screening in the presence of Raoul Servais AND restoreD by CINeMAteK:

Goldframe, Chromophobia, Operation X-70, Harpya & Nachtvlinders.

15.11 - 11:00 / Flagey

EXTRA SCREENINGS ON : 18.11 / 19:30, 27.11 / 19:30 & 29.11 / 17:30 @ Flagey

LIVING LIFE IN LIMBO MANU RICHE (L) AND TAREK HALEBY ON THE SET

ADAPTED FROM THE NOVEL BY DIMITRI VERHULST ABOUT A BELGIAN CENTRE FOR ASYLUM-SEEKERS, PROBLEMSKI HOTEL MARKS DOCUMENTARY-MAKER MANU RICHE’S FIRST FICTION FEATURE. BUT REALITY IS STILL VERY MUCH ON THE AGENDA.

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TEXT NICK RODDICK

director

“The humour that Dimitri uses is very much in the language, so I had to find a way to translate that into cinema”

EVGENIA BRENDES IN PROBLEMSKI HOTEL

Dimitri Verhulst’s novel Problemski Hotel began life as a reportage for a Belgian news magazine about a centre for asylum-seekers in Arendonk, a small town near the Dutch border. But the subject was so rich and complex that Verhulst produced a fictionalised account instead. That novel has now been filmed by acclaimed documentary-maker Manu Riche, neatly squaring the circle: a documentary that became a novel made into a film by a documentary maker making his first fiction film.

Riche, whose film Snake Dance - a creative documentary about the invention of the atomic bomb co-directed with British journalist Patrick Marnham - won the BuyensChagoli Prize in Nyon in 2013, was sufficiently intrigued by the book to approach Verhulst about the film rights, then began working with producer Emmy Oost of Cassette for Timescapes to make it happen.

“She was interested in doing a first fiction feature with me,” he says, “and I was interested in doing the same thing. Because I’m a documentary-maker, the book gave me the opportunity to explore something that was actually a documentary in itself, and was then turned into a novel. I did more or less the same with the film.

I mean, I’m a documentary-maker but there were certain things that I really couldn’t imagine as a documentary. That’s why I chose to make a fictional drama.

TARAK HALEBY IN PROBLEMSKI HOTEL

hard, tough and cynical “Of course, I’ve known about the whole problem of refugees in Belgium and in Europe for a long time,” Riche continues, “but I never really found an interesting way into it as a documentary. When I read the book, I really thought that he had found the right angle: a very hard, very tough, very cynical way of approaching it. To me, that was the right way.”

Problemski Hotel, Verhulst’s fourth published book but his first major success, was translated into 10 languages. A wry first-hand account of life in a temporary holding centre for refugees awaiting news of their asylum applications (which are always rejected), the novel is narrated by Bipul Masli, a photographer who has fled ‘Crapopia’ and ended up in a modern-day European version of limbo. It is bleak, cynical, politically incorrect and very funny, like a guided tour through purgatory led by Lenny Bruce.

Riche and his British co-writer Steve Hawes have kept the tone of the original while, of necessity, changing some of the details. Bipul, for example, no longer comes from ‘Crapopia’. Instead, he is suffering from amnesia and has no idea where he is from. This, as another character observes, gives him a trump card in the Problemski Hotel: “No one knows where he comes from, so they can’t send him back.” In the film as in the book, however, Bipul is still the central

35

GORGES OCLOO IN PROBLEMSKI HOTEL

character - our guide to this world. “The whole film is seen through his eyes,” says Riche. “He is somebody who is a presence and helps people do what they have to do, but he never interferes.”

avoiding miserablism

36

The film likewise maintains the neutral viewpoint of a documentary, neither patronising the sometimes absurd behaviour of the hotel’s guests’ (like the African refugee who pedals precariously but at great speed through the Brussels traffic on his bicycle), nor overstressing the awfulness of their fate. “I didn’t want to fall into ‘miserablism’,” says Riche.

“It was more interesting to observe real human people who are stuck in this place. These people are in miserable conditions for sure, but they don’t lack humour and they’re highly energetic.

They want to change.”

What the book also has but the film could not exactly replicate is the wry humour of Verhulst’s language, which treads that same tightrope between despair and humour. “The humour that Dimitri uses is very much in the language,” says the director, “so I had to find a way to translate that into cinema, and I’ve always been attracted to absurd humour - like the Christmas tree.”

Problemski Hotel opens with a fast tracking shot following an enormous Christmas tree on the back of a truck which is eventually delivered, for reasons no one seems to know, to the asylum centre. It then makes periodic appearances, providing a kind of surreal running gag, as a group of inmates try to find somewhere to put it.

But by far the film’s most effective visual metaphor is the building in which it is set.

A former bank in the centre of Brussels, all marble, steel and glass, it is quite literally a palace to the making of money, its cold luxury in stark contrast to the human souls to which it gives temporary shelter.

a symbol of our civilisation “It’s the biggest bank building in Brussels,” says Riche. “The bank collapsed in 2008 and, two years ago, they decided to tear down the building and build a new one in the same place. With a lot of diplomacy, we succeeded in getting it for several months to do the shooting. It is right in the middle of Brussels - a very typical building from the end of the 1960s, early 1970s. There is no modesty in that space and I think the building reveals a lot of what our civilisation is about. It’s a very empty, very frigid place. Symbolically, it was more interesting to put the refugees in that sort of building than in the refugee centres which were described in the book. I was looking for something more remote from reality. It is almost a kind of science fiction: it is a real building and yet it is not real. It is too big to be real - that really inspired me.”

The vast open spaces of the building also opened up the way for some elaborate camera movements and striking framing but, for all that these seem central to the film, the director insists that none of them was worked out in advance, let alone planned at script stage. ”To be honest,” he says, “I didn’t plan anything and definitely not in the writing. At that point, I never think of how I will do the mise-en-scène. We adapted the whole script according to what we found. The script was not written for that building and the Christmas tree was not in it, either: it was only in the very final version that we added it. The camera movements were also completely decided on the spot. I really believe in, not improvisation, but creating a situation in which the actors feel a kind of freedom - that they feel relaxed about what we will do and that we will adapt ourselves to them. It’s very close to a documentary. It’s also the way Renaat Lambeets, my camera operator and I, have worked together for 25 years.”

Finding the cast for the film was, admits Riche “a very long process”, drawing on both theatre actors and actual asylum seekers, sometimes a mixture of the two. “I started to work with people from theatre,” he says, “and did long sessions of castings with some people who basically came from refugee centres but who were involved already with some kind of artistic activity. Some were in amateur theatre groups. Tarak Haleby, who plays Bipul, is actually a very successful dancer who performs with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and other choreographers.”

Sometimes, the characters as written were adapted to the actors he found, in the same way that the mise-en-scène was adapted to the building in which they were working.

This was the case with Evgenia Brendes, who shines in the role of Lidia, a part originally written as Albanian. “She dropped in as the last candidate for the role,” says Riche.

“She came from Kazakhstan but has lived here for 10 years. She arrived when she was 12, studied in Antwerp and went to theatre school. I think she is wonderful.”

“There is no modesty in that space and I think the building reveals a lot of what our civilisation is about”

director

a long process

Problemski Hotel on flandersimage.com Manu Riche on flandersimage.com

a conversation with the actors And, much as the original book is a fiction based on a documented reality, so Riche drew on his previous experience when it came to working with actors. Directing drama, he says, “is very different from documentaries, where you don’t have to ask people to do something because they do it: it’s their real life. But what is important, I think, is to create a situation in which I can ask or suggest things, but it’s very much a conversation that is going on between the actors and me.

It’s not like me saying to them, ‘Take a step to the right’. That’s really not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in a more organic thing with the actors… I leave the situation quite open.”

The ending, too, is open, intercutting between two scenes: a dance in the asylum centre, and a container ship at sea, the latter being one of the most common - and very risky - ways for asylum-seekers to get to the UK. These two options, says Riche, reflect the position of the characters at the end of the film. “The container ship: is that hopeful or not? I don’t know. Deep down, I think the film and the book talk about the same thing: we are not going to be saved by something. Life is like that. The film is very much about saying ‘Look, we’re in it together so let’s try to make the best of it’.”  EVGENIA BRENDES AND TAREK HALEBY IN PROBLEMSKI HOTEL

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“It’s not your movie, it’s the director’s.

That’s something that’s really important to know”

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TEXT NICK RODDICK PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

OF A NEW GENERATION OF TALENTED PROFESSIONALS PUTTING FLEMISH FILM EDITING FIRMLY ON THE MAP.

editor

WITH A STRING OF CHALLENGING MOVIES ON HIS CV, ALAIN DESSAUVAGE IS ONE

THE MAGIC OF EDITING When he first went to film school, Alain Dessauvage didn’t really know what editing was. The RITS in Brussels, where he studied from 1991 to 1994, makes all students learn the basic techniques of filmmaking - camera, editing, sound - in their first year, he explains. And that is when he discovered the profession that would see his name appear on the credits of some of the most distinctive Flemish films of the past decade, starting with Moscow, Belgium (2008), via Bullhead (2011) to this autumn’s dark thriller The Ardennes.

Recalling his first year at film school, Dessauvage, now in his early forties, is full of enthusiasm for the eclecticism of the RITS. “That’s the magical thing about editing,” he says. “It’s not something that you realise exists unless you really start to get involved with it. At first I thought the other technical stuff was cool, but the moment I started doing some editing I thought, ‘This is something I really want to do’. For me, filming and photography are things I like to do in my spare time but I felt my strength was a lot more in a dark room with a director trying to make a movie. I never looked back. From the second year on I started editing, and it just felt right.”

For the first seven years of his professional career, Dessauvage worked at the Ace Digital post-production house in Brussels, fine-tuning his trade on state-of-the-art equipment - Ace had the best kit in Belgium - and picking up a few useful extra skills on the side like VFX and compositing. VFX wasn’t something he really fell in love with but found very useful when he started to work on features. “The advantage was, I learned a lot about compositing and that is something I can really use. I can say to a director ‘Look, this shot is problematic but we can fix it in post’ - which is something people always say, but in this case I can really show how to get rid of a problem. If you don’t have the experience of what’s possible in online, then maybe you would say to the director, ‘Look we can’t use this shot, we have to pick another one’. But for me it’s really handy to be able to say ‘We can save this one: we can use it’.”

getting the story right But digital wizardry, he insists, is not where the magic of editing lies. Scratch any editor and you will find a storyteller: Dessauvage is no exception. “The challenge for me,” he says of his work on The Ardennes, “was to get the flow of the story right: that’s the hard thing about editing, I think. It’s not to edit the scenes, but to get them in the right order and to get the tension between them. That way, you don’t get the impression of watching scenes one after the other but of watching a whole movie. That’s something you only achieve when you start working with the director - fine-tuning, tweaking, taking things out and getting the feel right. There’s always that moment when you think ‘OK, this is starting to resemble a movie’.”

‘Challenge’ is the right word: the movies which are the cornerstones of his career are all first features: Moscow, Belgium, Bullhead and now The Ardennes. But that was very much a matter of choice: offered a bigger, safer film at the same time as Moscow, Belgium, Dessauvage opted to work with director Christophe Van Rompaey. “I knew Christophe

THE ARDENNES

because I’d made one or two short films with him,” says the editor. “I was offered a film before that one but it was a much bigger commercial project - something which would appeal to a broader audience, but not a very interesting movie in my

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DARK BLUE – CMYK

BOMBAY SAPPHIRE QUEEN VIC CREST

V.U.: Wim De Witte, Leeuwstraat 40b, 9000 Gent, België – Creatie: www.blauwepeer.be

www.filmfestival.be

director

opinion. I refused that one because I really thought to myself, ‘My first movie must be something I can be really proud of’.

I was a little bit nervous but we had a very good script, good actors, good directing and it was nice to be able to participate in that.”

Dessauvage recently worked on his first UK movie: Couple in a Hole, an offbeat tale of a couple who end up living, just like the title says, in a hole in the ground. Directed by Belgian-born, UK-based filmmaker Tom Geens, it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and Dessauvage has, when we speak, just started work on Vincent and the End of the World, his second collaboration with Van Rompaey. “I’m editing chronologically, which is a good thing because it’s kind of a road movie,” he says. “Normally, you start working maybe two weeks into the shoot. One day I would edit scene 55 and the second day scene 15 and the third day scene 166. But now it’s in chronological order which makes it much more fun for me.”

Whatever the technical circumstances, however, it’s always about the film, says the editor. Looking back to his first collaboration with Van Rompaey, Dessauvage remembers not the technical process of making the film (which went on to win three prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008) but the story behind it. “I read the script and I really loved the idea, I think a lot of people can relate to that movie. It shows life as it is and as it could be. Once in a while you get this kind of movie where you come out of the cinema a little bit different than when you went in, and that is one of them.”

being on set or the director always being in the cutting room.

“What I generally propose - and most directors are OK with that - is that I make the rough version on my own. So, let’s say we have three months to edit the movie: then I would take half of that time, or maybe a bit less, to make the rough cut without the director.

beginning is the hardest part

analogy of an architect

The Ardennes - featured elsewhere in this issue - likewise passes the Dessauvage quality test with flying colours. “It’s hard to describe it,” he says, “and that’s what makes it so interesting. It’s a movie that I have the impression only Robin [Pront, the director] could have made because it’s a universe he knows so well: it’s weird in a way but also very personal.”

The story of two bothers whose relationship deteriorates as their world begins to implode - for further details, see page 12 - The Ardennes is, from an editor’s point of view, a film in which the balance and flow are all-important. Its premiere at Toronto suggest they have got it right.

“The challenge for me was to get the flow of the story right: it’s quite slow, but it’s intriguing. We wanted to build up the tension with what’s going to happen to these guys. That wasn’t the easiest thing to pull off but I think we managed it.”

As Pront himself admits, finding the right way into the story was one of the biggest challenges. “Yeah,” agrees Dessauvage. “To get the beginning right is always a very hard thing. We had the same trouble with Bullhead: I think we worked for a month on the beginning to get that right. In this case [The Ardennes] it was easier, because it just involved taking a whole scene out so the movie starts with a guy jumping into a swimming pool… if you start with the aftermath of the action [that originally started the film], you have a whole different set-up.”

Collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean the editor always

“I always like to make an analogy of an architect. If you want to build a house, you go to an architect and you discuss what your plans or ideas are and you try to find somebody who has similar taste to you and you know that they can create something that you want to live in. From that moment on, you let the guy work. You’re not going to be there when he starts drawing and trying things out. You want to be there the moment he presents something which isn’t finished yet but which at least you can discuss. It’s the same with editing: I like to make a first version and then I can familiarise myself with the rushes. Then, when I’ve seen everything and I know what the weaknesses are, I can show the director a different view - or different from what he would have thought of when he shot it. And from that moment on we keep working together until the end.

Realising the director’s vision is rule number one. “It’s not your movie, it’s the director’s. That’s something that’s really important to know: as an editor, you participate in the process of making a movie. I always think that if a director edited his own movie, it probably wouldn’t be very good; but if the editor edited the movie without the input of the director, it would probably be meaningless too,” he concludes. “There’s a reason a director makes a movie and that’s something I need to discover while working with him. I want his input. It’s not about you, it’s about the movie.” 

VINCENT AND THE END OF THE WORLD

MOSCOW, BELGIUM

BULLHEAD

Alain Dessauvage on imdb.com

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pukka.be

The first time Luc Vrydaghs can recall noticing the barber shop effect was in Jenin, the Palestinian city whose refugee camp has played an important role in the conflict with Israel. He was there making a programme with the Flemish photographer Lieve Blancquaert, and he and cameraman Lou Berghmans decided to go to the barber’s.

“At that time I still shaved my head, or had very short hair, and Lou and I went into Jenin to get a haircut,” he recalls.

“And so there we were in the refugee camp, where the first Intifada began, and you could feel the life at the barber shop. All these people were coming in, like a soldier and children before going to school. That was the moment I thought: this is an interesting place.”

The more Vrydaghs travelled in subsequent years, with or without his camera, the more the idea appealed.

“To be in a place and to go to the barber is always a very special experience,” he says.

LIFE IN THE MIRROR TEXT IAN MUNDELL PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

a way into the story In 2006, Vrydaghs completed Gas Station, a TV series looking at the communities around gas stations in six very different places: Arizona, India, Australia, Iceland, the Czech Republic and Israel/Palestine. Thinking about a follow-up series, barber shops had immense appeal.

The episodes would not be portraits of the barber or discussions about hair, although both would sometimes become part of the story. Instead, each episode would use the shop and the conversations that take place in the barber’s chair as a way into a community

FOR DOCUMENTARY-MAKER LUC VRYDAGHS A BARBER SHOP ISN’T JUST A PLACE FOR A SHAVE AND A TRIM. “IT’S SOMEWHERE WHERE LIFE STOPS FOR FIVE MINUTES AND PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THOSE THINGS THAT I WANT TO MAKE MOVIES ABOUT,” HE SAYS. BEGINNING IN THE US, HE IS CURRENTLY FILMING A SERIES OF SIX SHORT DOCUMENTARIES IN

42

BARBER SHOPS AROUND THE WORLD.

selecting the shops As in Gas Station, the locations for Barber Shop are selected to show a wide range of cultures and communities.

“The common thread in the series is people in transition, or in situations that are evolving. So all the pieces have to respond to that idea,” says Vrydaghs.

Each also has to have something to grab the viewer’s attention. “I like to tell stories with an original setting. It doesn’t have to be spectacular or have violence and murder, but there has to be an angle where I can tell a story in a unique way.”

Vrydaghs carries out the initial research with Lotte Knaepen, then the groundwork in each location is done by a local researcher, who scouts out possible barber shops. Then Vrydaghs visits for four or five days to get a feel for the place and see if it is possible to tell the story he has in mind. “I talk to the barber and, through him, get to know a few of the people who come to the shop,” he explains. Interesting characters can then be coaxed back during filming.

Vrydaghs has given himself 11 days to film each episode, with a crew of three plus local fixers for the tougher locations.

This brief shoot must provide all the material for a 26-minute episode. “It’s a good time to tell a story in,” he explains.

“You can tease and say just enough for it to stay interesting. Most of the time, people want to see more, and that’s a good thing.”

detroit and johannesburg The first location for the series is Detroit, and a barber shop connected with the city’s long musical heritage.

“All the Motown singers came to Larry’s and they still come.”

This produces a strong sense of nostalgia. “These old black guys are still living a little bit like they are 18 or 20. They do their hair like Chuck Berry; they don’t have it cut, they style it. And they are very proud.” At the same time, Detroit is undergoing a profound economic crisis, which will also be part of the story.

The next location is likely to be in South Africa, where Vrydaghs wants to focus on the poor white minority marginalised by the fall of apartheid. Initially, he went to the Afrikaner town of Orania, but he felt that its story had already been told.

Returning to Johannesburg, he heard about small, white-only settlements or plakkerskampen on the fringes of the city. “These are camps where someone with a house has built some new outbuildings, and put a fence around them with some guards, and people live together inside. They are like little arks.”

The plakkerskamp in which he wants to film does not have a barber shop as such, but there is a woman who cuts hair in front of her shack. “It’s a very interesting setting and the story also has several layers, with the boss of the camp wanting to save the white race a little, the resistance to the system and the fear.”

other locations After Detroit and Johannesburg, the schedule depends on whether or not the initial research pans out. Situations can change, and promising ideas may be blocked if a particular community proves resistant or there simply isn’t a suitable barber shop.

Ideas in the air include Senegal, where Vrydaghs would like to explore the issue of polygamy through a women’s hairdresser, and Cuba. He is also keen to film in the frozen north of Russia, where migrant labour is being drawn to new towns set up by the oil and gas industries. “These are boom towns and the beginning of a new life in unbearable conditions,” he says. “I hope to find a barber for the people who have emigrated there to work so I can tell the story of these pioneers.”

Barber Shop is due to be completed by the end of 2016 and will screen on Flemish public TV channel Canvas. It is produced by Timescapes and sales agent First Hand Films is currently looking for international buyers.  Gas Station on flandersimage.com spijkersite.com

“The common thread is people in transition, or in situations that are evolving”

director

and the issues it faces. “I want to film the conversations, and then get the story just from the conversations,” explains Vrydaghs.

This does not mean that the camera has to stay in the shop all the time. “When I feel I have a character with interesting things to say, sometimes I’ll follow him to a place that reflects their personal life or the story. It’s not only between the mirrors and the chair, but also the life around the barber shop.”

documentar y

STEEP LEARNING CURVE SHOT OVER ALMOST THREE YEARS, REACH FOR THE SKY PROBES DEEP INTO THE JAW-DROPPING WORLD OF THE KOREAN UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE EXAM SUNEUNG. TEXT NICK RODDICK

PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

On the second Thursday in November, the whole of Korea comes to a stop - unless you’re a student trying to get into a top university. As fixed a date as Christmas, that is when the Suneung - College Scholastic Ability Test or CSAT - is sat by

known as the SKY colleges - can scupper a student’s entire career. “If you go to the top-class university, you can be sure of a good position in one of the big companies,” explains Gert Van Berckelaer, Dhoedt’s partner in production company Visualantics, who co-produced the film with Korean colleague Sinae Ha.

taught by society

REACH FOR THE SKY

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650,000 students, all sitting exactly the same papers at exactly the same time. The roads are closed off around the exam centres; police cars rush any student stuck in traffic to the building; for certain exams where noise might be a distraction, flights are grounded.

The pressure to do well is, as the above suggests, intense, and Steven Dhoedt’s remarkable new documentary, Reach for the SKY - which premieres at the Busan International Film Festival in Korea in October - records a year in the life of three students (two girls and a boy) and one teacher (male) as they prepare for Suneung and deal with its aftermath.

A less than perfect score effectively closes the door to a top university - perceived as a disaster by status-conscious Koreans. Not getting into one of the three universities on whose names the film’s title plays - Seoul National University, the University of Korea and Yonsei University, collectively

There is a memorable scene in which one of the students tells his father that, for him, getting into a top university is more important than studying well. “That’s how he thinks,” says Dhoedt. “That’s what society has taught him. His father doesn’t believe him at all, but he doesn’t want to listen. He really believes that, by going to that university, he’s going to become a more important figure in society.”

But we shouldn’t be too judgmental about this system, insists Dhoedt, whose film coolly and elegantly observes from what one might call an intimate distance. “I think in any film, based on your edits, you do take a position,” he says, “but it’s not very obvious here. I don’t think it’s my place to be judgmental.

I’m not saying I’m just there to observe, but I think the most important thing is that you try to explain to a non-Korean audience where all of this comes from, and to understand the context better.”

“A lot of it is very similar to the situation in Europe after the Second World War,” he adds. “My grandparents were also very keen to have my parents go to university instead of learning a craft. Now that kind of idea is a bit gone with the new generation, but I think it’s very similar to what you see now in South Korea. They still believe that going to university is a chance to go higher up in society; to have a more fulfilling life.

It’s also a lot to do with the sense of hierarchy, which is still a very important part of that culture: the hierarchy and respect for elders. That brings you back, of course, to the whole Confucian system, which is at the core of a lot of [East Asian] cultures.”

“The roads are closed off around the exam centres and flights are grounded” STEVEN DHOEDT (L) AND GERT VAN BERCKELAER

professional gamers Dhoedt worked for a while in Hong Kong before his first of many trips to Korea. “It really started with his first film, Inside the Metaverse, about virtual worlds,” recalls Van Berckelaer.

“There was this one scene about Korean professional gamers and it was so strong that we decided to make a film about it.

It didn’t fit inside the other film because the game they play is not a virtual world.” The result was State of Play (2010), which in turn nudged them in the direction of Reach for the SKY. “For me,” adds Dhoedt, “it was kind of a logical progression to go from professional gamers to the education system, because what I discovered when I was interviewing them is that a lot of these kids became professional gamers to escape school life. When I discovered that, I obviously started exploring a little bit more about what was going on in the school system.

That’s how we came from one subject to the next. It’s similar in a way because they’re both about competition, just in two very different fields.”

repeating the year They began lining up six students to focus on and subsequently negotiating with Megastudy, the quasi-evangelical (and very expensive) private company which trains students in an almost round-the-clock programme designed to up their scores. “The exam is only once a year,” says Dhoedt. “We had to cast our characters 10 months before it so we could follow them throughout the entire year and then follow them during the aftermath - the university applications and the graduation from school and the result of getting into a university.

“We did that once and we were happy with the characters, but we felt we didn’t have enough, so we extended it to another year. That’s when we finally got into the boarding school which you see in the film. That was really hard; there’d never been a camera crew in these kinds of private schools before.”

Repeating the year was a tough financial decision, admits Van Berckelaer, and one of which he, Dhoedt and Visualantics bore the brunt. “In documentary,” he says, “the financial part is always problematic, because it takes a lot of time to get the money together and you always have to start shooting before you do. You cannot save on camerawork and mixing and post-production: in the end it’s the producers and directors who say ‘OK, we’ll invest our share of it and let’s hope the movie sells enough and we can have some money’.”

new platforms In the old system of sales agents and theatrical windows, he adds, this would have been a long shot. But with the new distribution platforms, it’s a whole new world. “As a production company, we are quite forward-looking; we really believe that you can release a film at the same time on television, in theatres and on VOD. With State of Play we did that. We had a very small theatrical release but, because it was a film about geeks on the internet and gamers, the VOD worked very well.

We did it via VHX, a company based in New York. They take a small percentage and they arrange your whole website: it’s really easy to sell the film.” Now there’s seven words to bring joy to the heart of any documentary-maker. 

Steven Dhoedt on flandersimage.com

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Reach for the SKY on flandersimage.com

DO THE LIGHT THING AT 28, DOP ROBRECHT HEYVAERT IS ALREADY SHOOTING HIS FOURTH FEATURE AND KNOWS JUST HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT LIGHT. BUT WHAT REALLY MATTERS TO HIM IS FINDING THE STORY. TEXT NICK RODDICK PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

46

As he neared the end of his schooldays, Robrecht Heyvaert found his choice of career briefly challenging. “When I was about 17 years old, I didn’t know exactly what to do,” he says, “but I was quite clear what I didn’t want to do - which was just about any job I could think of! What did interest me was film, so I went to film school at RITS in Brussels.”

There had been other little steps along the way, including a childhood obsession with the making of films, courtesy of a VHS on ’The Making of Forrest Gump’. He also had a job as a projectionist which filled in the gaps in his film education. “It was a 35mm projection room with two projectors you had to switch between. I was really happy, because I could combine the wonderful technique of 35mm film and at the same time see lots of movies, which was a dream come true.”

The dream became reality over the next three years at RITS, followed by a remarkable ascent of the career ladder which sees Heyvaert, at just 28, with a

number of shorts - including the prize-winning Baghdad Messi - under his belt, along with a TV series (Vermist), three striking features (including Black and The Ardennes, both selected for Toronto) and a fourth one in production.

“Directors of photography are often a little on the macho side,” says Nic Balthazar, director of the above-mentioned fourth film, Say Something Funny. The fascinating thing with Robrecht is that he is much more gentle and quietly persuasive. If you didn’t know him better, you could mistake his modesty for shyness - until something in production or whatever stands in his way and you can see the pit bull coming out who will fight for every shot, every frame, every detail that matters. That’s how you know you have an artist at work. I already call him Robby, after Robby Müller [the great Dutch DOP, famous for his work with Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch], because my bets are already on that he is going to be just as great.”

focus firmly on the film Balthazar’s comments point to what it is that makes Heyvaert sought after: a determination to focus firmly on the film he is shooting without imposing his own style on it. “One of the things I’m really proud of is that Black and The Ardennes are quite different films,” he says. “I hope you wouldn’t be able to see they were shot by the same DOP. I think it will be the same with Say Something Funny. We’re shooting everything on location: back stage in small theatres and small green rooms, make-up rooms, hotel rooms… Lots of limited spaces and lots of available light.”

Available light is also a key feature of Black, whose gangland Romeo and Juliet story is very much a summer-in-the-city film.

“The thing about Black is there had to be a lot of energy, a lot of motion, a lot of characters, lots of things happening at the same time,” says Heyvaert. “You have to feel that combination of energy and warmth… actually, ‘summertime’ is a better word.”

Says the film’s co-director Adil El Arbi: “Robrecht is a brother to us and a soldier of images. He will fight to the death to make the best movie. He is a true magician - every shot is a painting - and he is a genius in storytelling.”

a matter of contrast Heyvaert’s website contains, along with links to films, a selection of photographs which reveal a passion for dark images which anticipates in some way The Ardennes. But, insists the young DOP, it’s not really as simple as that. “I like contrast even more

than darkness. In most of the dark pictures, there’s always some highlights or bright spots. The Ardennes is a lot deeper, a lot darker than Black; the tempo is slower and there is not very much camera movement, but I wouldn’t say it is a very dark film. We had an atmosphere which was quite dark but the image itself is not.”

Finding the right light for the right scene has posed major problems for Heyvaert on several of his films. On Black, “most of the exteriors were planned in terms of the sun’s path,” he says, “because in Brussels you have very narrow streets with quite high buildings.” This was the case in a key fight scene: “There were only one or two hours of direct sun in that street so it all had to be planned around that.”

Filming Baghdad Messi in northern Iraq posed an extreme version of the same problem. “Even though the landscape and the locations are very beautiful,” says Heyvaert, “to get lighting material into the country was very difficult, so most of it is shot with available light. We had some reflectors to reflect the sun inside the house. It was all planned by the path of the sun. I did the location scouting with the producer and the director two weeks before we started shooting and, on the basis of the sun’s path on the compass, we made the schedule. It worked out quite well.”

cinematographer

“Black and The Ardennes are quite different films.

I hope you wouldn’t be able to see they were shot by the same DOP”

it’s the story that counts But in the end, it’s the story, not the technical aspect, that counts, insists Heyvaert - a lesson he learned quickly when he went from shooting a commercial to a short or a feature. “You shoot different shots and you tend to forget that all the different shots have to form a theme and the theme has to inform an entire movie,” he says. ”The thing that is difficult for me about shooting features is keeping the overview - each moment you’re on set knowing where you are in the story, and each shot that you film, how it will be part of the entire film. Setting up the shots is always the same but thinking about them is different.”

At all events, Heyvaert plans to stick to features from now on.

“I’ve never really been a commercials DOP,” he says. “My main focus has mostly been short movies and television series and then the features. I do mostly fiction, and if I have to choose between features and commercials, I will always choose the feature - if it’s a good story. One of the reasons I started in this business was because I’m interested in movies.”

And beyond that? An ambition to direct, perhaps? The answer comes straight back without hesitation.

“No,” he says. 

47

GOING GILLES COULIER IS A DIRECTOR AND GILLES DE SCHRY VER

AN

-

BUT

TOGETHER

ARE

PRODUCERS,

AND

THEIR

ALSO

ACTOR

DE

WERELDVREDE

(‘WORLD

TO

L AUNCH

FIRST

ITS

TV SERIES THE NATIVES.

48

GILLES COULIER (L) AND GILLES DE SCHRYVER

PEACE’)

MAJOR

THEY

COMPANY IS

ABOUT

PRODUCTION,

Gilles Coulier and Gilles De Schryver have been friends since working together on Coulier’s 2010 student short Paroles. Since then, De Schryver has become a familiar face on screen thanks to the feature film Come As You Are and the TV series Tom & Harry and Code 37, with the latter also spinning off a movie. Coulier, meanwhile, followed up student films Iceland, a Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) Wildcard winner, and Paroles with Mont Blanc, which was selected for the Cannes Short Film competition in 2013.

Throughout this time the pair discussed working together, and in particular going beyond their usual roles. “As a screen actor, it was getting harder and harder for me not to mind about how things were written, how the story was told, whether it was well cast and if the right team was working on it,” says De Schryver. “So I was starting to feel the need to produce something myself one day - and by producing I don’t mean only the business side of it. Producing is also being creative.”

Coulier felt the same way. “Gilles comes from a family of entrepreneurs, as do I, and we were always talking about how cool it would be to produce, but we didn’t have anything concrete to do,” he says.

producer

NATIVE

TEXT IAN MUNDELL PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

“We want to make the things that we want to make and not produce for the sake of it” Gilles Coulier

a company is born The opportunity came when Coulier was approached by a group of actors and writers with a script for a TV series. As well as presenting a chance to launch their company, The Natives was a project that Coulier and De Schryver thought would be best served by them being in control. It tells the story of a famous stand-up comedian, Freddy De Vadder, who moves from the city to a tiny little village called Bevergem. Why he has come is a mystery, and his presence has a strange effect on the locals. “The script was so intense and so specific that I knew that any other producer would either not want it or would take it and tone it down,” says Coulier.

“It’s a really hard script.”

Everyone agreed that independence was the way to go, and the project was submitted to VAF for development funding on that basis.

director and producer With the production underway, De Schryver and Coulier divided responsibilities.

As director, Coulier took the creative lead. “On set, I cannot be the producer because my team would fight me,” he explains. “At that point I’m on the artistic side, and with my team beside me I want to fight for what they want and what I want.”

Meanwhile De Schryver became executive producer, drawing on his experience running his own theatre group, Het Kip. Sometimes there were difficult discussions, but never serious disagreements. “The struggle between a director and a producer is part of the magic,” says Coulier. “But at the end of the day, he wants to make something that is beautiful and artistic and I want to make sure that we have the money to shoot on the next day.”

49

“Of course I’m there to remind Gilles about the budget,” says De Schryver.

“He has to force himself to keep dreaming and I have to force myself to stop dreaming. So we try to keep that in balance.”

making the natives

The Natives began with standup comedian Bart Vanneste, who got a group of actors together and

There are some familiar faces from Flemish film and television, such as Vanneste as Freddy, Wim Willaert, Maaike Cafmeyer and Sébastien Dewaele. But there are also plenty of new names, like Isabelle Van Hecke, Wannes Cappelle and Piet De Praitere. “I think it’s our responsibility as a young production company to introduce actors to the public who are not the usual suspects,” says De Schryver. “We will absolutely do that with this series.”

With director of photography David Williamson, Coulier devised a straightforward approach to shooting that showcased the performances. “It’s always very simple but it looks beautiful and very cinematographic,” he says. Pushed to describe the atmosphere of the series he says it’s a combination of The Big Lebowski and Lilyhammer.

ALL STILLS THE NATIVES

50

workshopped a set of characters, mining their experiences and frustrations with life to produce his script. When Coulier and De Schryver’s company De Wereldvrede took it on, there was a ready-made cast committed to the project.

Coulier’s first step was to polish the script and start working with the actors.

“That is another advantage of having your own production company,” he says. “We were able to rehearse for three months with all the actors to make sure that on day one of the shoot everybody knew what to do and the tone we were after.”

international ambition Running for eight episodes of 45 minutes, The Natives is part of the relaunch of Flemish public TV channel Canvas, hopefully bringing it a younger audience. The series is also attracting international attention, appearing in a side programme at Séries Mania in Paris and generating interest at the MIPTV market last April.

De Schryver thinks it has a good chance of an international career. “The difficulty with The Natives is that it is about a typical Flemish village, but we really believe that by zooming in this close you end up zooming out, and that we’ve created something universal. In France they have these villages, in Scandinavia and in the UK as well.”

guest and cargo

While The Natives was underway De Wereldvrede began its second production, a short film by Moon Blaisse following up her VAF Wildcard winner Maybe Later.

Called Guest, it follows a man (Peter Van Den Begin) through a long, strange night after he has made a sudden break with the people in his life. This time it was Coulier who took on the business side of the production.

de wereldvrede philosophy Now that De Wereldvrede is established, Coulier and De Schryver are starting to think about the future. “We’re not here to take over the industry,” says De Schryver.

“We just want to make really good movies, and I think the key to that is to stay small and choose our projects with care.”

Coulier agrees. “We want to make the things that we want to make and not produce for the sake of it. I know this is very utopian and idealistic, but we are young and we really want to do it like that.”

Beyond Cargo, the pair are developing a new TV series for a large Flemish network, a thriller that they have conceived together. They are also working on the feature debut of Wannes Destoop, whose student film Swimsuit 46 went to Cannes in 2011.

And in addition to De Wereldvrede projects, Coulier will continue to direct for other producers. First up is The Day, a TV series written by Jonas Geirnaert and Julie Mahieu, produced by Woestijnvis. 

dewereldvrede.be

So far De Schryver has not appeared in any De Wereldvrede productions, although he is holding out for a cameo in Cargo. “This time I want to be in it, because it is too much fun,” he says. But his motivation for producing is not to line-up roles: “It’s to satisfy the part of me that worries about the bigger picture, rather than just my part in it.”

However, he doesn’t rule out initiating projects that open new doors for him as an actor. “I work a lot with people who write roles for specific actors, so in that sense I can see us developing a movie or a TV series which would fit me as an actor and allow me to play roles that another director maybe wouldn’t give me the chance to play.”

At the same time, becoming a producer has changed his perspective on casting.

“Suddenly I take a lot of roles that I didn’t get in the past a lot less personally,” he says. “As a film actor, you just look the way you look and there are only so many roles that your face fits.

So you just have to be patient and not want it all at once.”

His forthcoming screen roles are all outside De Wereldvrede: Resurrection, the feature debut of Kristof Hoornaert, produced by Flemish company Fobic Films, and two Frenchspeaking roles for Belgian production companies Versus and Hélicotronc. “So I’ll be doing three features, hopefully, next year, all very different parts from those I’ve done so far.”

Gilles Coulier on flandersimage.com

51

The Natives on flandersimage.com

ACTING AND PRODUCING

director

The company’s next major project will be Coulier’s feature film Cargo, a drama about three grown brothers who come together at the death of their father to set the family fishing business back on its feet. Faced with desperate times, they turn to drug smuggling and then people trafficking. “It’s about why people commit crimes, but it’s also a family story,” Coulier explains. “It takes place in a hard world, but a world that is also very visual.”

Cargo won a place in this year’s Torino Film Lab, and Coulier is currently honing the script with co-writer Tom Dupont (Offline). The cast will include Sam Louwyck, Wim Willaert and Sébastien Dewaele, with David Williamson on board as director of photography. De Schryver will again take the executive producer role.

LESS IS

MORE

AS SHE PREPARES TO DIRECT HER FIRST FEATURE, NATHALIE TEIRLINCK TALKS ABOUT THE IMPACT INGMAR BERGMAN AND MICHAEL HANEKE HAVE HAD ON HER APPROACH TO CINEMA.

TEXT NICK RODDICK PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

INSPIRATIONAL THE THINGS AND PEOPLE THAT HAVE INSPIRED NATHALIE TEIRLINCK DVD

UZAK, NURI BILGE CEYLAN

on imdb.com

under the influence

Anyone tempted to think of the movie business as fundamentally glamorous would do well to check out Nathalie Teirlinck’s schedule as she commutes daily from Ghent to Brussels during pre-production on her first feature, Tonic Immobility. “We start shooting on November 5,” she says in mid-September. “It’s not that close, but not that far either. I’m a control freak so that doesn’t help!”

Tonic Immobility, which Bart van Langendonck is producing for Savage Film, is basically a two-hander. The title refers to the self-induced paralysis animals use to protect themselves, colloquially known as ‘playing dead’. “It’s about a very atypical mother/son reunion,” says the director, who studied - and now teaches - at the KASK film school in Ghent. “It’s a real character piece about a high-class call girl who is forced to take care of the son she abandoned years ago.

It’s really a portrait of their coming together with the only link being the parental bond. It’s a very pure and simple story and I want to keep it pure so as to be able to tell it differently.”

Teirlinck has written and directed four theatre pieces - giving her the experience of working with actors and making her, she reckons, “more aware of the importance of characterisation by behaviour”. But her cinematic reputation rests on a trio of powerful shorts - “Anémone (2006); Juliette (2007); and Venus vs Me (2010), the latter nominated for a European Film Award - all of which share the same poetic style. Water ebbs and flows, fields of long grass rustle, young girls stare straight at the camera or turn their backs on it. With their restless handheld camera movements and amplified natural sounds, the films are strange, slightly threatening and hypnotic. But, as Teirlinck would be the first to admit, it is not a style suitable for a feature.

“I had a hard time translating the language of my short films to my feature,” she says, “because it’s a totally different viewing experience. I had a feeling I was working with another medium, like when you write poems and all of a sudden you have to write prose: the grammar changes and you have to adapt to it. I can’t make it like a stream of consciousness for 90 minutes. Well, I can, but it’s not what I want to do!”

Watching her shorts at festivals was the eye-opener. “That’s where I learned about the audience and I began to understand the viewer experience and the importance of how and when you provide or hide narrative information… especially because, in my work, I like to explore this thin line.”

But Teirlinck won’t be going right back to square one with Tonic Immobility. “Yes, it will be more of a narrative but it will still be associative,” she insists. “What struck me with my shorts and is still there in my feature is that I learnt more and more the importance of films not showing things; that there is more meaning in what is hidden than what is shown.”

Teirlinck originally planned to make documentaries, but then discovered that fiction offered more possibilities. “I felt the urge to show the world we know in a different way,” she says. “At the time I wanted to make documentaries as a mirror, but when I realised I was looking more for a magnifying glass, I found more tools for that in fiction.”

It was at this point that the director also discovered two masters of cinema, part of whose mastery lay precisely in knowing what to show and what not to show, and in demonstrating that cinema is not just a visual medium. First came Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, which Teirlinck saw while at film school. “I had such a physical reaction to it,” she recalls. “It was really about the way that sound and image were used as equals. That, for me, was a perfect example of what this medium can and should do: make the invisible visible. It’s not always about what is shown, it’s also about what’s not shown; and that’s only possible when you work with all the forces the medium has.”

Michael Haneke’s Funny Games hit just as hard. “It really made me shiver,” she says. “I wanted to turn away from the screen but I couldn’t. It was such a strong experience: it took my breath away, the way he was able to observe normal human beings in an exceptional situation. I particularly remember one scene where the whole family is murdered and the mother is sitting there with her hands tied behind her back and the first thing she does is jump to the television to turn down the sound. That was so incredible. What this movie meant for my work is that I discovered the huge importance of characterisation through action and behaviour, Haneke is a master at this.

My god, amazing!”

All other influences pale by comparison. “At the moment I’m really fond of Claire Castillon, a French writer.” But cinema trumps the lot. “I used to read more than I do now. Often, when I’ve read 20 pages, I think I could easily have watched a movie…” 

DOCUMENTARY

SANS SOLEIL, CHRIS MARKER

play button

NOVELIST

CLAIRE CASTILLON

on wikipedia.com

PAINTER

EDWARD HOPPER

on wikipedia.com

PHOTOGRAPHER BILL HENSON

on wikipedia.com

VIDEO ARTIST DAVID CLAERBOUT

davidclaerbout.com

53

fans

ONE FROM THE HARP BERLINALE PANORAMA CHIEF WIELAND SPECK RECALLS THE MOMENT A FLEMISH FILM SET HIS ‘INNER HARP’ VIBRATING.

Europe is made up of a patchwork of languages, dialects, cultures and identities, and it is that specific sensibility, setting it apart from its bigger neighbours, that gives Flemish cinema its unique feel, reckons Wieland Speck, who has curated the Berlinale’s Panorama section since 1992.

“All these things are reflected wherever you go in Europe,” says Speck. “The village my mother came from has a different language than the next village. It’s difficult to pin it down because it becomes quite artificial when you do so, but I think the self-reflection of this consciousness makes Flanders what it is - compared to the neighbours that it really doesn’t want to be like. I think that’s very European.”

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN

BULLHEAD

54

The Panorama has a proud history of premiering Flemish films at its annual February line-up, showcasing new films by established directors alongside debut works by up-andcoming talents. And, while Speck’s curatorial activities are not really driven by where a film comes from, he admits that trends frequently emerge - and Flemish cinema is currently right on trend. “Sometimes you see certain countries all of a sudden becoming strong,” he says, “and then they disappear - like Germany disappeared for many years. Italy we’re still waiting for to come back.

“But I think Flanders has been extremely exciting for us,” he continues. “The filmmakers that we’ve shown over the years are very much Flemish. They’re not Dutch, they’re not this, they’re not that: it’s like a way of looking defined by what it is not. There’s a freshness, a certain radicalism.”

Nor has it just been the past few years, which have seen Bullhead and Broken Circle Breakdown go from the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin to an Oscar nomination in Los Angeles. “Going back, the early films of Dominique Deruddere in the 1980s, they were exciting,” recalls Speck, “and Broken Circle was a very strong piece of cinema. But definitely I think the one that made us all fall on our backs with admiration was Bullhead, the Michaël R. Roskam film: that one blew us away big time.”

What made it so exciting? “Well, first of all we did not know this wonderful actor [Matthias Schoenaerts] who, in the meantime, has played himself into our consciousness everywhere in the world. But it was also the analytical view on gender roles in a rural context. My entire harp started to resonate. That’s how I receive films: through my inner harp. The harp is an instrument where you only need a little wind to make a sound. Here it was the broken maleness. I thought it was very modern and very honest, beaming into the future instead of just fulfilling itself as a narrative. The film immediately caught on: every single screening was packed. I was astonished by how warmly it was received.

“I know that many filmmakers remember their premiere in Berlin for the rest of their lives,” Speck concludes. “I know that because I am a filmmaker myself, and I have been part of other festivals and I’m thankful for those festival-makers. That is a very strong emotional point that I really like to remember. But otherwise I’m quite humble in this respect. Often I think ‘Wow, how wonderful that I can do something for this or that film’.

And in this case I wasn’t disappointed.” 

TEXT NICK RODDICK

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end credits TAKE 33 / AUTUMN 2015 / €3,99 COVER / Robin Pront & Jeroen Perceval

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PUBLISHED BY Flanders Image/VAF Flanders Film House Bischoffsheimlaan 38 / B-1000 Brussels Belgium/EU T +32-2-226 0630 / F +32-2-219 1936 E flandersimage@vaf.be Flanders Image is a division of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) SPECIAL THANKS TO / Albert Bimmel, Gudrun Burie, Dirk Cools, Myriam De Boeck, Pierre Drouot, Siebe Dumon, Evert Eriksson, Katrien Maes, Erik Martens, Karla Puttemans, An Ratinckx, Jan Roekens, Koen Salmon, Dirk Schoenmaekers, Katrijn Steylaerts, Tom Van der Elst, Karen Van Hellemont, Barbara Van Lombeek, Marijke Vandebuerie, Leen Vanderschueren, Sander Vanhellemont, Stijn Verbruggen, Ward Verrijcken, Helga Vinck + all the filmmakers and producers who helped on this issue.