08/12/2011

Since 2005, the team at the Brussels Short Film Festival has been making the most of the festive period to celebrate national cinema with the Be Film Festival. So Christmas has come early for audiences, who, over five days, will have the chance to (re)discover all the Belgian films that have attracted attention in the past year, whether Francophone or Dutch-language ones.

Therefore, over 20 films will be shown from December 19-23, including major Flemish box office hits (Michael Roskam’s Bullhead [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bart Van Langendonck
interview: Michaël R. Roskam
film profile] and Geoffrey Enthoven’s Hasta la Vista) and festival favourites (the Dardenne brothers’ The Kid With a Bike [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
film profile], directorial trio Abel, Romy and Gordon’s The Fairy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
film profile], Bouli Lanners’s The Giants [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Bouli Lanners
film profile]), which it will be great to watch or re-watch.

But the festival will also screen films that have enjoyed a little less visibility, which will get a fresh chance to reach out to Brussels moviegoers. This is particularly true for certain Flemish films, which are sometimes released on only one screen in Brussels, often outside the city centre at Kinepolis. We’ll be keeping an eye out for screenings of Hilde Van Mieghem’s comedy Madly in Love, which takes an uninhibited look at sex and stars a first-rate cast (Marie Vinck, Koen De Bouw, Veerle Dobbelaere, Koen De Graeve, Wine Dierickx, Kevin Jannsens, Jan Decleir) and 22nd of May [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the second film by subversive director Koen Mortier who made a strong impression with his irreverent Ex-Drummer [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

The Be Festival will also offer some impressive exclusive events. The team behind Jérôme Lemaire and Vincent Solheid’s The Big Trip will make a single appearance in Brussels at the Bozar as part of its Wallonia tour. Benoît Mariage is back behind the camera: as we await his next feature, in the meantime he has chosen to focus on a colleague. As part of the “Cinéastes d’aujourd’hui” (“Filmmakers of today”) series initiated by the Cinematheque of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Mariage takes a look at the life and work of Bouli Lanners in a documentary entitled On the Road Again.

Finally, the Be Film Festival will screen two films in avant-premiere: Vincent Lannoo’s Little Glory [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Mathieu Donck’s debut film Torpedo, starring François Damiens and Audrey Dana.

(Translated from French)