17/06/2024 - The first 2024 session of the Cinema Commission will support 66 film projects for a total of €4,39 million

Director Laura Wandel, whose new project L’Intérêt d’Adam has been selected

Through the first 2024 session of the Cinema Commission, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre has decided to support 66 film projects (shorts and features, fiction, animation and documentary) which will receive an aid promise for writing, development or production, for a total amount of €4,39 million.

Amongst those, four Belgian feature films are receiving production support, including the second feature by Laura Wandel, noticed in 2021 for her first feature Playground [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Laura Wandel
film profile], presented in Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section and winner of the FIPRESCI award on that occasion, as well as winner of seven Cinema Magritte awards, including for Best debut film and Best director. She is about to shoot L’Intérêt d’Adam this summer, which will dive into the heart of a pediatric unit, where a nurse must make radical choices in order to help a mother in distress. The film is produced in Belgium by Stéphane Lhoest for Dragons Films, and by Delphine Tomson for Les Films du Fleuve.

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Les Films du Fleuve, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s company, will also receive production support for the new film by the brothers following Tori and Lokita [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joely Mbundu
interview: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
film profile] (special 75th anniversary award in Cannes), La Maison Maternelle. The film will focus on five young mothers fighting to ensure a better world for their children. The shoot is also planned for this summer.

The filmmaker of Macedonian origins Teona Strugar Mitevska is also supported by production aid, and it is in fact the first time that one of her films will be produced mostly in Belgium, under the guidance of Sébastien Delloye for Entre chien et loup. Renown internationally for films such as God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Labina Mitevska
interview: Teona Strugar Mitevska
film profile], presented in competition at the Berlinale, or for The Happiest Man in the World [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Teona Strugar Mitevska
film profile], in Orizzonti in Venice, she returns with Mother, an ambitious biopic project about Mother Teresa, born in Skopje like her, which will take us to Calcutta in 1948, when the nun was thinking about creating her own congregation, the Missionaries of Charity.

The last film receiving production support is Mirkouri by the brothers Ish and Moins Ait-Hamou, which tells the story of Hamza, a little boy in a small village in the south of Morocco, whose life turns upside down when he discovers Freddie Mercury on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine… The film is produced by Jacques-Henri Bronckart for Versus Production.

Amongst the other projects receiving help, we will note the development support given to two debut features: Brûleurs by Barney Frydman (produced by Alon Knoll and Grégory Zalcman for Take Five) and La Sirène et le Crocodile by Charles Habib-Drouot (produced by Sebastian Schelenz for Velvet Films). Three other films are receiving development support: Géraldine Doignon (De leur vivant, Un homme à la mer [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) is working on her third feature, Ali n’a pas l’âge, handled by Iota Production; Benjamin Dessy and Lionel Delhaye are working on Un vrai flic, produced by Narrativ Nation; and finally, Delphine Cousin and Delphine Renard are developing Sunny, an animated feature produced by Luna Blue Film.

(Translated from French)