The Wallonia-Brussels Federation’s Minister of Culture has approved the funding commitments issued by the Commission, which is run by the Wallonia-Brussels Film and Audiovisual Centre. Fifty-eight film projects have been granted support in its first session for 2026, including five French-language, Belgian-initiated feature films in the production stage, two of which are by Philippe Van Leeuw and brothers Lenny and Harpo Guit. 

After starting out as a cinematographer (notably on The Life of Jesus, Demented and Les Bureaux de Dieu), Philippe Van Leeuw first made a splash in 2009 with his directorial debut The Day God Walked Away, before following up with In Syria - which won the Audience Award in the Berlinale’s Panorama section, as well as the Magritte Award for Best Film - and, more recently, The Wall. Having previously focused on the wars in Rwanda and Syria, En marchant sees him turning to the war in Ukraine and imagining a soldier and a child meeting on the frontline. The film is being produced in Belgium by Velvet Films.

The Commission is also throwing its weight behind a project of an entirely different kind, which is the third feature film by Lenny and Harpo Guit. Known for their off-the-wall, gleefully trashy and thoroughly iconoclastic comedies (such as Mother Schmuckers and Heads or Fails), they’re currently gearing up to shoot Le Vieux marché, whose main character is a man in his fifties who runs a stall in a Brussels institution: the flea market on Place du Jeu de Balle. As with their first two movies, the brothers are backed by Roue Libre Production.

Three other films are also set to benefit from production support. First up is Baraki, a standalone feature directed by Fred De Loof which resuscitates characters from RTBF’s hit series, and two debut feature films: Aline Magrez’s genre-tinged Sous silence, which is an atmospheric thriller produced by Frakas Productions and revolving around a young woman allergic to noise who works for a virtuoso pianist, and Les Silencieux by Basile Vuillemin, which is produced by Versus Production and adapted from his own short film which scooped a Magritte in 2024.

Development support has likewise been granted to new films by Laura Wandel (Playground and Adam’s Sake, both unveiled in Cannes), who’s returning with a historical film entitled Le soleil tombe sans bruit, which is produced by Les Films du Fleuve; and Paloma Sermon-Daï (remarked upon in Berlin thanks to her documentary Petit Samedi and subsequently in Cannes via her fiction debut It’s Raining in the House), who’s back with Bijou en vrai, once again produced by Michigan Films. Support is also winging its way to Delphine Girard (honoured in Venice for Through the Night), who’s currently working with Versus Production on Train de nuit, and Frédéric Fonteyne (A Pornographic Affair, Tango Libre), who’s developing Podolski for Artemis Production.