01/12/2025 - Belgian filmmaker Karima Saïdi presents a portrait which was been shot over the long-term of the men and women who watch over their departed loved ones in a multi-confessional cemetery in Brussels

Following its world premiere in competition in the IDFA, Karima Saïdi has presented her second documentary feature, Those Who Watch Over, in the Medoc section of the 25th Cinemamed –Brussels Mediterranean Film Festival. The Belgian director first turned heads in 2020 with her feature film debut, A Way Home, which charted her lively yet modest reunion with her mother, who was living with Alzheimer’s, telling a story about family and exile. These two themes are also central to Saidi’s latest movie, which once again revolves around the filmmaker’s mother, whose wish was to be buried in Brussels’ multi-confessional cemetery. Deeply rooted in modern-day Belgium, its people and its multicultural nature, but also profoundly timeless in its relationship to life and death, this graveyard imposes itself as worthy film material by way of its characters, its dramaturgy and his own temporality.

What’s special about this cemetery is the fact that it was the first to have accommodated - several years earlier - the remains of men and women who wanted to be buried in line with their own non-Christian funeral rites. A piece of land in which to primarily lay to rest people of Muslim or Jewish faiths, but which soon also became a place of welcome for Brussels’ entire orthodox community. A diverse place where people exchange stuffed dates and anecdotes but, first and foremost, deep respect for suffering and for other people’s love.

As the seasons pass, the film observes and meets the people using the cemetery, the loved ones and families who keep dialogue alive with their departed loved one, unimpeded by death. Paradoxically, the cemetery is full of life, life which comes in waves, sometimes in silence and sometimes full of noise, when burials, celebrations or anniversary dates comes thick and fast. There’s something here for everyone: people keep themselves busy, maintain graves, lay flowers or even dig graves. Scores of people visit the cemetery, either alone or in number, offering up words, tears or music. It’s a place of care and memories, welcoming the dead and the living.

Karima Saïdi’s camera always adopts the perfect distance, often staying close to the families, as if visiting the cemetery alongside them, and stepping back when the emotion becomes more collective in kind. Because cemeteries are also a place for coming together, where grief and sadness are shared just as readily as joy and happy memories; they’re a seat of drama, where tragedy resurfaces through a look or a sob, and of memories of happier days too. The cemetery is a crucible into which the director delicately pours emotions, humour and poetry, all part and parcel of the lengthy process of mourning entered into by loved ones who never forget.

Those Who Watch Over was produced by Dérives (Belgium) in co-production with Sophimages (Belgium), Les Films du Fleuve (Belgium) and Les Films d’ici (France), with support from the Brussels Audiovisual Centre, RTBF and the Doha Film Institute.

(Translated from French)