28/06/2016 - Screen Flanders is investing €1,515,000 in seven audiovisual productions for its first 2016 session, including four majority Belgian films and three co-productions

Director Jan Verheyen

Screen Flanders has agreed to support 55 Steps, the new feature by Danish director Bille August, set to be toplined by Hilary Swank and Helena Bonham Carter. This co-production with Germany (via Elsani Film) will be staged in Belgium by Potemkino. Potemkino is also co-producing another German feature, Lili la petite sorcière – Spécial Noël by Florian Baxmeyer, produced by German outfit Blue Eyes Fiction. This will be the third instalment in the successful Lilly the Witch series of children’s films. Screen Flanders is also backing Funan by Denis Bo, about the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1960s and 1970s, a biographical animated feature produced by French firm Les Films d’ici and co-produced in Belgium by Lunanime, which specialises in animated titles.    

Screen Flanders will be supporting four majority Belgian movies, including the hotly anticipated new opus by Michaël Roskam. After his US venture (The Drop), Roskam is back with Le Fidèle, a Brussels-based thriller starring his pet actor Matthias Schoenaerts and Adèle Exarchopoulos (read the news). The film, which was shot in spring, is being produced by Bart Van Langendonck for Savage Films. Another huge project expected to drop in 2017 is Double Control [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Jan Verheyen, the sequel to two smash hits at the Belgian box office, The Alzheimer Case [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Dossier K [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. In it, Verheyen will follow a new inquiry led by detectives Vincke and Verstuyft, played by Koen de Bauw and Werner de Smedt. The film will be produced by Eyeworks, as was the case with the previous instalments in the series. 

The two other Belgian projects being backed are Sprakeloos by Hilde Van Mieghem, starring Viviane de Muynck and Stany Crets, the shoot for which should kick off at the end of July (produced by Caviar), and Pippa by Marc Punt, produced by Independent Productions, principal photography for which is currently under way (read the news).

(Translated from French)