26/03/2026 - The creators of the historical series, which dives into war-torn Antwerp in 1942, explain why it’s more relevant than ever

Kevin Janssens (left) and Filip Lenaerts

Presented in Series Mania’s International Panorama, Breendonk [+see also:
interview: Kevin Janssens, Filip Lenae…
series profile] dives into war-torn Antwerp in 1942, when Flemish people were facing the German invasion. It was a time when every friend could be a foe and every foe a friend. We talked to the show’s creators, Kevin Janssens and Filip Lenaerts.

Cineuropa: Breendonk was a Nazi prison camp, but unlike, say, Auschwitz, not that many people know of it. And you even named the show after it.
Kevin Janssens: It’s not that far from Antwerp, where I live. Every day, cars pass by and no one actually knows what went on there. When I first went there 14 years ago, I was overwhelmed by this concrete bunker, which is still intact. I was overwhelmed by the stories, too. Flemish-speaking men were guards there as well, and they were torturing men. It’s a black page in Belgian history.

Breendonk wasn’t a concentration camp; it was a prison, but people were killed there as well. I think that World War II is still a bit of a taboo subject in Belgium, especially in Flanders. Many people in Antwerp, including the police, collaborated with the Germans.

You are telling many stories here. It’s not just about the camp; you also show what’s going on outside of it.
KJ: We didn’t want to deliver your usual World War II story where it’s just about the terrorism and the resistance. We wanted to show the moral complexity of men. Why do people make these choices? They would wear an SS uniform and then go home to their family. As a director, but also as an actor, I’m always interested in how we, as ordinary people, act in not-so-ordinary situations. What would I do? Honestly, I don’t know.

Filip Lenaerts: We read the testimonies of Breendonk prisoners, and they were proof of great bravery and great humanism. There was humour, and they had deep conversations about religion and philosophy. They refused to let their dignity be taken away. It became about something bigger than just prisoners oppressed by guards. Then, we found out about the smuggling of letters, which allowed us to venture outside. We could connect those two worlds. This camp was a shameful secret for the Germans – what happened there was so horrible. They knew that if word got out, it would fuel the resistance.  

You said it’s still a taboo. Do you think it’s easier to start this conversation with a TV show? People can choose not to go to the cinema, but it’s different when they are already at home.
KJ: I hope so. I hope it will affect people. Recently, a show called Godvergeten, about abuse in the church, set a lot of things on fire in Belgium. We didn’t want to make a series where you could just turn it off, go to bed and forget all about it. We wanted people to say: “I couldn’t sleep.”

If you look at the world now, we have internet and social media, we can learn so much more about each other, and yet we’re more and more separated. We’re getting more destructive. I really hope that after watching the show, people think about what they would have done and how it relates to the world we live in now. At the end of episode two, you see the prisoners. It wasn’t in the original script. I saw them standing against the wall; many of these extras actually lost their family there. It’s like having history looking right back at you. It’s not far: it’s right here.

FL: I think polarisation is when people start believing in different truths, and that’s exactly what happened in the years leading up to Breendonk. Now, we see the same dynamics and are facing the same moral dilemmas. What would you do? When will you rise up? Unfortunately, Breendonk is timelier now than ever before.

Kevin, your character reminded me of The Zone of Interest [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. He does horrifying things, and then cares for his family. How did you talk about this duality?
KJ: It’s the same with the police officer, who’s so righteous and protective of his son. He’s trying to be a good cop, but he’s on a tightrope the whole time. Everyone is using each other. It’s for the audience to say whether that’s right or wrong, but there might be no right or wrong if you just want to survive.

When it comes to camps like these, there is some imagery that we already know. Were you trying to show this place in a different way?
KJ: The interesting thing about the camp was that it was under sand. When the Germans came in, they had the prisoners dig it out as manual labour. It was a Sisyphean task.

FL: It was a great help that we actually got to shoot there. Right after the war, it was turned into a memorial. Nothing was changed, so it’s in exactly the same state as it was when the Germans left. There was a wall built around it so that you couldn’t see from the outside what was happening inside. To shoot there, a board of historians had to read our script. Turns out, what we wrote was close enough to the truth.

KJ: Yes, and then we went to another fort, which was very similar. There were a lot of back-and-forth conversations about shooting in Breendonk, but it just made it more real. Suddenly, you were standing there with the actors, being pushed into the showers and yelled at by the guards. It was intense. It was history standing right next to us again.