19/12/2008

The festive season sees the return of the Belgian Film Festival, with its new title: BE Film Festival.

The name has changed, but the format remains the same. The talented team at the not-for-profit organisation Un soir… Un grain (who headed the festive Brussels Short Film Festival) has put together a selection of the best Belgian releases of the year, from the North and South of the country.

Audiences will be able to enjoy films they may have missed over the course of the year. The programme includes unmissable Cannes titles such as Lorna’s Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arta Dobroshi
interview: Arta Dobroshi
interview: Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne
interview: Olivier Bronckart
film profile] by the Dardenne brothers (this year’s best-performing Belgian Francophone film with 60,000 admissions, followed by Bouli Lanners’ Eldorado [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] which drew 41,000 viewers and is also on the line-up) and Christophe Van Roompaey’s Moscow, Belgium [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (this year’s second biggest Belgian box office hit with 180,000 admissions, behind the spectacular Loft [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

The BE Film Festival will also be an opportunity to (re)discover another gem from Cannes 2008: the poetic and quirky Rumba [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Charles Gillibert
interview: Dominique Abel and Fiona Go…
film profile] by Abel, Gordon and Romy.

Viewers will also get the chance to see lesser-known films, including Benoit Mariage’s Cowboy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benoît Mariage
film profile] and Frédéric Ledoux’s recent title Une chaine pour deux [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“One Chain for Two”); as well as Flemish films less widely distributed in Brussels, such as Geoffrey Enthoven’s Happy Together (launched in February), Pieter Van Hees’s Left Bank (released in March), and Jan Verheyen’s Cut Loose, which has just won Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Cairo Film Festival.

Lanners will be given free rein as he puts together a selection of unusual cinematic works in "lourds et d’essai" (“heavy and experimental”). This section is a joyful assortment of music videos, shorts and other peculiar audio and visual creations.

Finally, the BE Film Festival will host the avant-premiere of the new film by brothers Guillaume and Stéphane Malandrin: the atypical Hand of the Headless Man [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. Produced by La Parti Production, the film has a sharp and offbeat cast that includes Cécile de France and Ulrich Tukur in the lead roles, as well as the aforementioned Lanners.

(Translated from French)