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CANNES 2011 Directors’ Fortnight / Belgium

Belgian films bookend Quinzaine

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Over the past three years, the Directors' Fortnight seems to have fallen in love with Belgian cinema. A rich crop of titles has been selected at recent editions, including Joachim Lafosse’s Private Lessons [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jacques-Henri Bronckart
interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile
]
and Bouli Lanners’s Eldorado [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
in 2008, Felix Van Groeningen’s The Misfortunates [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Felix van Groeningen
film profile
]
in 2009, and Olivier Masset-Depasse’s Illegal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Masset-Depasse
film profile
]
(European Parliament LUX Prize 2010 competition) and Gust Van den Berghe’s Little Baby Jesus of Flanders [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
in 2010. The same goes for 2011, as three Belgian features are in the line-up.

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The surprise selection is from Van den Berghe, who is back already just one year after his debut film, with a project that is just as unusual as Little Baby Jesus. Blue Bird [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
is loosely based on the novel The Blue Bird (1908) by Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgium’s only Nobel Prize winner for literature.

The adaptation follows the spirit rather than the letter of the book. Van den Berghe aims to tell a tale about the end of innocence, whereas Maeterlinck focused on the quest for happiness. To reinforce the universal aspect of the story, Van den Berghe and his small team went filming in Togo, which was an opportunity to delve into animist culture and its close relationship with nature.

Blue Bird is the third feature produced by Tomas Leyers in the last three years, and his third film selected at Cannes, which is encouraging for Minds Meet as it backs unconventional films. Blue Bird will be sold internationally by The Coproduction Office.

As predicted on the Francophone side, new films by Lanners and directorial trio Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy (photo) have been selected. Frédéric Boyer has, moreover, given them prime slots. Abel, Gordon and Romy’s gently eccentric burlesque tale The Fairy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
film profile
]
will open the Directors’ Fortnight, three years after Rumba [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Charles Gillibert
interview: Dominique Abel and Fiona Go…
film profile
]
. It is produced by France’s MK2 (who are also handling international sales) and the directors’ Belgian company Courage Mon Amour.

Meanwhile, Lanners will close the Quinzaine with his latest feature, The Giants [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Bouli Lanners
film profile
]
, which chronicles the summer adventures of a group of teenagers. Sold by Memento Films, the film is produced by Versus, who return to the Cannes sidebar after Private Lessons, Eldorado and Illegal.

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(Translated from French)

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