10/06/2025 - The Film Commision grants aid to 61 new projects in its final session for 2024

Directors Nabil Ben Yadir (© Aurore Engelen) and Stephan Streker (© Aurore Engelen)

For its 3rd session for 2024, The Film Commission overseen by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre has awarded a total of 4.79 million euros to 61 film projects, which will receive grants for writing, development or production. Most memorable among the projects assisted in the production phase are two by as many established Belgian cinema directors, Nabil Ben Yadir and Stephan Streker.

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The former, whose most recent film, Les Baronnes, is currently in post-production (read our news), is now hard at work on his fifth feature film, Un bon père, which tells the story of Ahmed, a sworn translator who works for the police, who’s faced with an impossible choice when he hears tapped phone recordings seriously implicating his favourite son, Ali. The movie is being produced by Benoît Roland and Nabil Ben Yadir on behalf of 10.80 Films.

For his part, Stephan Streker is continuing his collaboration with Michael Goldberg and his new firm Boucan Production, which will also produce this fifth feature film by the director. The subject of the movie entitled Le Silence de Dieu is being kept under wraps for now, as was also the case for the director’s previous works at this stage in the production process, which have all been inspired by real and striking local news stories.

Likewise in production, the promising first feature film Au bord du monde by Amelia Nanni - a coming of age tale taking a singular approach to the theme of loss - has also been singled out by the Commission. A remote Italian village seems to be cursed by the evil eye because, every summer and winter, somebody dies. The film is being produced by Isabelle Truc on behalf of Iota Production.

Two filmmakers with incredibly different styles are also receiving support for their tricky and long-awaited leap to second features. Thomas Ancora (Losers Revolution [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) flirts with genre film by way of Culte, a textbook slasher which thrusts us into the midst of a group of young students from a particularly elitist university campus. A young man is killed during a rite of passage but the others choose to hide what’s happened to protect their reputation. A year later, the students who were present on that tragic evening receive a troubling package: somebody knows what happened and is out for revenge… The film is being produced by Stephane Lhoest for LG Studio.

Meanwhile, having explored the psychological thriller genre with Post-Partum [+see also:
trailer
interview: Delphine Noels
film profile], Delphine Noels is now trying her hand at an ambitious historical film called Krieg. In 1941, in Tübingen, Felix’s everyday life as an economics teacher changes when a senior national security official entrusts him with the mission of readying the town’s main industry for a war economy. He’s determined to see the mission through, but the task becomes harder when a young Jewish woman with whom he was raised, called Judith, bursts back into his life. Will he be courageous enough to listen to his humanity? The film is being produced by Cassandre Warnauts on behalf of Frakas Production.

The last feature film receiving support in the production phase is by German director Ronny Trocker, who turned heads with The Eremites [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (screened in Venice’s Orizzonti line-up in 2016) and Human Factors [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ronny Trocker
film profile] (selected for the World Cinema Dramatic Competition in Sundance 2021). He’s been awarded aid for Eden Sonate, produced by Joseph Rouschop for Tarantula.

Last but not least are six films set to be supported in co-production, namely two Flemish films called Coward - the hotly anticipated feature film by Lukas Dhont (Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lukas Dhont
film profile], Close [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Eden Dambrine
interview: Lukas Dhont
interview: Lukas Dhont
film profile]) - and Heysel 85, by Teodora Ana Mihai (read our article); the Moroccan-Spanish film Calle Malaga by Maryam Touzani; Swedish movie The Wolf Will Tear Your Immaculate Hands by Nathalie Alvarez Mesen (selected for Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight via Clara Sola [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nathalie Álvarez Mesén
film profile]), and two first feature films entitled I Matter by Alina Serban (Romania) and In a Minute You’ll Be Gone by Hadas Ayalon (Israel).

(Translated from French)