Of a cinema close to reality..
Belgian cinema rose to prominence in the 1990s, with films that were close to reality and genuinely social in nature. Documentary film obviously has an important place in Belgian cinema, thanks to works such as Gigi, Monica... et Bianca (1996, Yasmina Abdellaoui, benoît Dervaux), Cinéastes à tout prix (2004, Frédéric Sojcher) or more recently L'homme qui répare les femmes (2014, Colette Braeckman, Thierry Michel). This documentary follows Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist and human rights activist in the Congo, whose mission is to repair Congolese women who are victims of sexual violence. In fiction, the undisputed masters of the genre are undoubtedly the Liège-born brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. From their beginnings as documentary filmmakers to their worldwide acclaim for feature-length fiction, "the brothers" make it a point of honor to emphasize the social nature of their work. With Rosetta (1999) and L'Enfant (2005), the Dardennes won the most coveted prize at the Cannes Film Festival: the Palme d'Or. More recently, their film Deux Jours et une nuit (2014), starring Marion Cotillard, was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. Their latest film is Tori et Lokita (2022), in which a young African boy and a teenage girl befriend each other and together face the difficulties and horrors of migrant life. The film is another success, with the Dardennes winning the Special Prize at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in 2022. Also in this sphere of realism are works such as Ma vie en rose (1997) by Alain Berliner, Ultra Nova (2005) by Bouli Lanners, Nos batailles (2018) by Guillaume Senez with Romain Duris, Seule à mon mariage (2018) by Martha Bergman, or more recently Lola vers la mer (2019) by Laurent Micheli. While the quest for the authentic has a special place in the heart of Belgian cinema, we are also witnessing the rise of offbeat works by artists with assertive directorial choices and already-defined universes.
... to a genre cinema
The last two decades have brought a wave of visionary, cheeky directors, starting with Ixelles-born Jaco Van Dormael. Van Dormael impressed with his first feature Toto le héros (1991), which won the César for Best Foreign Film and the Caméra d'or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. This was followed by the very moving Huitième Jour (1996), featuring the encounter between workaholic Harry (Daniel Auteuil) and Georges (Pascal Duquenne), a young man with Down's syndrome. However, Van Dormael scored a stroke of genius with Mr Nobody, the most expensive Belgian film to date, featuring an impressive cast (Jared Leto, Rhys Ifans, Diane Kruger, etc.). The director took seven years to write this complex work, which was released to critical acclaim in 2009. Flemish artists in particular have an assertive personality and a certain essence that is particularly recognizable, as is the case with English cinema. This is particularly true of Félix Van Groeningen from Ghent, who released the acclaimed La Merditude des choses in 2009. Two years later, Michaël R. Roskam made his mark on Belgian cinema with Bullhead, which brought actor Matthias Schoenaerts to the attention of the general public. The film won an Oscar nomination and a César nomination in the Best Foreign Film category. In 2012, Van Groeningen returned with the beautiful Alabama Monroe, about the different reactions of two parents to the loss of their child. This raw yet intimate film received a nomination in the Best Foreign Film category in 2014. In recent years, new directors have brought a fresh, hard-hitting wind to Belgian cinema. These include Robin Pront and the thriller The Ardennes (2015), François Troukens and Tueurs (2017) as well as Adil El Arbi and Billal Fallah and the hard-hitting film Black. In 2018, this Belgian duo was chosen to direct the blockbuster Bad Boys for life (2020, sequel to the legendary Bad Boys) starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The same year, young Lukas Dhont directed the beautiful Girl, about trans-identity. The critically acclaimed film won four awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Caméra d'or. Released in 2022, his second film, Close, is just as moving. The story of a thwarted friendship between two young boys, the film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and is in the running for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
2018 also brings Duelles, a Franco-Belgian drama directed by Olivier Masset-Depasse, which wins nine awards at the Magritte du cinéma ceremony in 2020. Released in 2023, a Hollywood remake saw the light of day with Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway in the lead roles.
Belgian humor on screen
While the Flemish region excels in the dramatic genre, Wallonia shines for its wry humor. In 1992, Namur actor-director Benoît Poelvoorde, André Bonzel and Rémy Belvaux released the controversial C'est arrivé près de chez vous . The film was made as part of Rémy Belvaux's graduation project, at the time a student at INSAS, the renowned Brussels film school. A kind of remote mise en abyme, the film is shot in the style of a documentary and features a shaky team of directors and cameramen following Benoît, a folkloric hitman. The film was highly controversial at the time, with scenes of physical and sexual violence, as well as the so-called "Little Gregory" sequence. The black humor is at its height in this scene, in which Ben explains the recipe for a cocktail named after the infamous little Gregory, murdered in the 1980s. Thirty years on, the film continues to divide, categorized as cult by some and shameful by others. The film did, however, win the SACD prize and the Youth Special at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. In 1999, Benoît Poelvoorde starred alongside Bouli Lanners in Les Convoyeurs attendent, directed by Belgian Benoît Mariage. Critics praised the acting and the bittersweet quality of the entire film. In 2006, Olivier Van Hoofstadt released Dikkenek, a true follow-up to C'est arrivé près de chez vous. This comedy, which also gained a cult following in Belgium, featured a host of well-known actors: Marion Cotillard, François Damiens, Mélanie Laurent, Catherine Jacob, Jean-Luc Couchard, Dominique Pinon... Like its precursor, Dikkenek divided the critics, going from silly and perverse to humorous masterpiece in a fraction of a second. A year later, director Sam Garbarski released the comical Irina Palm, starring Marianne Faithfull. In 2009, Brussels-based director Nabil Ben Yadir made a name for himself with Les Barons. Shot in several districts of the Belgian capital (Molenbeek, Saint-Gilles, Forest...), this comedy follows the daily lives of four unemployed friends, experts in shenanigans, who call themselves the local Barons. More recently, Jaco Van Dormael gave the role of God to Benoît Poelvoorde in his surreal comedy Le Tout Nouveau Testament (2014). Poelvoorde plays an ugly, dirty and mean God whose work is turned upside down by his daughter's decision to leak the date and time of death of every person on Earth. Little Ea then sets off in search of six new apostles to write the "brand new testament". In 2017, Bouli Lanners released Les Premiers, les derniers, in which he shares the screen with Albert Dupontel. This film about the adventures of two bounty hunters won five Magritte awards in 2017, including Best Film.
On the small screen
In 1985, Wallonia brought us a program that reflected a folkloric Belgium with a strong character: Strip-Tease. This documentary program, created by Jean Libon and Marco Lamensch, shows us glimpses into the lives of ordinary people. "Strip-Tease: l'émission qui vous déshabille" is a catchy, colorful title representing the way subjects "bare" themselves to the director and technical crew. With this comical yet intimate program, every viewer finds themselves a little (or a lot) in the colorful characters the show unearths. In 2018, the show's creators released the feature-length documentary Ni juge, ni soumise, which follows, over the course of a few months, the work of Brussels investigating judge Anne Gruwez (already at the heart of two Strip-Tease episodes on TV). The judge's strong character and choice of defendants make this film a hit, and it won the Magritte and César awards for best documentary in 2019. On the series front, the Walloon region brings us La Trêve and Ennemi public. These two series are the result of a call for projects launched by the RTBF television channel and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation to develop several French-speaking Belgian series. The two detective programs not only share space on the Belgian channel, but also the French spotlight, with La Trêve broadcast on France 2 and Ennemi Public on TF1. Flanders, for its part, has seduced us with programs such as Clan (2012, for which Apple TV has made a Bad Sisters remake), Spitsbroers (2015) and Professor T. Created in 2015, this series follows the adventures of criminology professor Jasper Teerlinck and has enjoyed international success, so much so that it is entitled to French and German remakes. There's also WtFock (2018), the Flemish version of the Norwegian series Skam (2015), to add to the dozen or so remakes (including the French-Belgian version Skam France). Each season of the series tackles a topical issue for teenagers, such as harassment on social networks, consent, homosexuality or even religion, and is thus a hit with young people in Belgium and around the world. Since 2019, the series Undercover, created by Nico Moolenaar, features a global ecstasy producer in a Limburg campsite whose network is infiltrated by two policemen. As for the hyperactive Adil er Bilall, they have directed Grond for Netflix, a series in which the protagonist decides to set up his small business trafficking Moroccan soil so that Moroccans in Belgium can be buried here.
