28/11/2024 - For its second session of 2024, the centre’s Film Committee is backing 73 projects, for a total amount of €4.03 million

Directors Raphaël Balboni and Ann Sirot, whose project Un détour par Diane has received support (© Maël G Lagadec)

The results of the second 2024 session held by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre’s Film Committee have just been announced. Seventy-three projects are being backed by a total amount of €4.03 million.

Standing out among them is Un détour par Diane, the new movie by duo Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni, who turned heads with their feature debut, Madly in Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Raphaël Balboni & Ann Sirot
film profile], which scooped the Magritte Award for Best Film in 2022, then subsequently with The (Ex)perience of Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ann Sirot & Raphael Balboni
film profile], shown as a special screening in the 2023 Cannes Critics’ Week. Un détour par Diane follows the path of Diane, who desires men just as fervently as she despises them. When she finds out that her mother was raped in her youth, she is stunned. It's a surprise, but at the same time, it explains everything. Diane only has one goal in mind: to avenge her mother. Except that her mum has a different plan: to finally become the woman she should have been. With one woman wanting people to remember and another wanting people to forget, the whole situation becomes extremely tense. For the first time, this film by the directorial duo will be produced by Delphine Tomson for Les Films du Fleuve.

L’Or Rouge is the feature-length fiction debut by director Mathieu Volpe, who recently made a splash with his documentary feature An Italian Youth [+see also:
film review
interview: Mathieu Volpe
film profile]. With L’Or Rouge, he looks back upon territory he previously explored in the doc. The film zooms in on Regina, a young woman originally from Cameroon who arrives in the Ghetto, a slum in the south of Italy where hundreds of migrant workers are exploited for tomato harvesting. This is the same place where, one year earlier, the tragic fate of her son Isaac was sealed. Uncovering the truth about his death will be the only way for Regina to appease her constant, gnawing feeling of guilt. Producer Delphine Tomson is thus getting twofold production support, as Les Films du Fleuve is also on board this project.

The committee also selected Yammi, the second feature by Hinde Boujemaa (who helmed Noura’s Dream [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which screened in the Discovery section of Toronto and in New Directors at San Sebastián in 2019). Yammi tells the tale of a brother and sister whose bonds are put to the test by the disappearance of their mother. Yammi is being staged by Climax Films.

We should also point out that Karim Ouelhaj, whose latest film, Megalomaniac [+see also:
film review
interview: Karim Ouelhaj
film profile], had a very impressive festival run after its premiere at Fantasia, is receiving post-completion support for his new project, Brûler avec les anges, which tells the story of an author haunted by his literary alter ego, produced by Okayss.

On the international front, the committee has opted to throw its weight behind a trio of female directors: Julia Ducournau, who, with Alpha (produced by Mandarin Productions and Petit Film in France), continues her fruitful collaboration with Belgium via Liège-based Frakas Productions; Rachel Lang, who is readying Mata (staged by Chevaldeuxtrois and Nolita in France), the shoot for which is about to get under way, produced on the Belgian side by Wrong Men; and Kaouther Ben Hania for You Shall Not Make an Image (produced by Tanit Films in France and Mime Films in Tunisia), who is reuniting with Kwassa Films, which previously co-produced The Man Who Sold His Skin [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kaouther Ben Hania
film profile]. Two other Belgian outfits are being supported as co-producers: Versus Production, which is helping to stage Les Clochettes de Kaboul by Chabname Zariab (produced by Alta Rocca Films in France and co-produced by Starhaus Filmproduktion in Germany) and Steel Fish Pictures, which is co-producing La Maison du vent by Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu (staged by Horizons d’Afrique in Cameroon and La Mansarde Cinéma in France)

(Translated from French)