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PRODUCTION / FUNDING Belgium

An eclectic first session of 2020 for the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film Centre

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- The Film Selection Committee is backing 56 new projects and supporting talents hailing from domains such as music (Baloji) and literature (Thomas Gunzing and Adeline Dieudonné)

An eclectic first session of 2020 for the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film Centre
Musician and director Baloji

The Belgian Minister of Culture has just announced the results of the first 2020 session of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre’s Film Selection Committee. Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional measures, and so the hearings for this first session of the year were held remotely, while it was also possible to send submissions for the second committee 100% online.

Among the 56 projects receiving backing are feature films by multidisciplinary talents such as musician Baloji, who has already helmed several short films, and whose feature debut, Omen [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Baloji
film profile
]
, produced by Eve Commenge for Anonymes Films, is receiving production support. Meanwhile, Thomas Gunzig and Adeline Dieudonné, two key figures in the Belgian French-language literature scene, have been granted writing support for their joint project Le Ventre Idéal, produced by Diana Elbaum for Beluga Tree.

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Three other majority Belgian features are being backed at the production stage. In La vierge à l’enfant [+see also:
film review
film profile
]
(produced by Playtime Films), Berivan Binevsa will tell the story of a young Yazidi woman and how she takes revenge on the man who enslaved her. Micha Wald (In the Arms of My Enemy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Simon Konianski [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Micha Wald, director of Sim…
film profile
]
) is back with L’Ile de la demoiselle (Stenola Productions), a period film set in Quebec in the 16th century, while Olivier Ringer (Pom, le Poulain, On the Sly [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Birds of Passage [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
) is preparing Les Gentils (staged by Ring Prod).

Also of note is the support conferred upon the eagerly awaited sophomore features by auteurs who have already made quite an impact. Marta Bergman (Alone at My Wedding [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marta Bergman
film profile
]
, selected for the ACID) is being backed for the development of L’Enfant Bélier (Frakas Productions), a fiction film loosely based on the death of little Syrian girl Mawda, a migration-related tragedy and human-interest story that rocked Belgium, while Matthieu Donck, still basking in the success of the series The Break, is delivering L’été de mes 40 ans, a new comedy on the heels of Torpedo [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, which came out a few years ago. After his Magritte Award for Best First Film for Bitter Flowers [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Meys
film profile
]
, Olivier Meys is writing Réveille-moi, the story for which is set in a centre for asylum seekers. Also noteworthy is the writing support being provided to an auteur behind several medium-length titles, Claude Schmitz (Carwash [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), who is preparing his feature debut, Les Détectives.

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(Translated from French)

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