Initially scheduled to take place in June, at the start of the summer, the Brussels International Film Festival has now settled into a slot at the end of said season, in the midst of the always-hectic start to the school year; at the same time, the event will lift the lid on the big autumn releases across its different sections. From 4-12 September, the festival will play host to films hailing from all over the world, most of which have shone brightly at major international gatherings – movies such as A Man of His Time by Emmanuel Marre, which was popular with both festival-goers and the French press at Cannes, where it picked up the Best Screenplay Award, and which will have the honour of opening the BRIFF as well as taking part in the International Competition. It will be presented alongside nine other movies that took part in Cannes, Sundance, San Sebastián and Berlin, with their settings ranging from 1990s Chile to 17th-century Germany, via modern-day Scotland.

Audiences will thus be able to watch Rose, a historical fable by Austria’s Markus Schleinzer, which earned the exceptional Sandra Hüller the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance last February; The Son and the Sea, a sensitive story of male love and connection by Scotland’s Stroma Cairns; Shame and Money by Kosovar-born Albanian director Visar Morina, winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance; and I’ll Be Gone in June, the feature debut by German helmer Katharina Rivilis, which was first unveiled in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. The International Competition will also welcome Chronicles from the Siege by Palestine’s Abdallah Alkhatib, The Meltdown by Chile’s Manuela Martelli, the Brazilian movie If I Were Alive by André Novais Oliveira and Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building by Bruno Santamaría Razo, which whisks us away to 1990s Mexico.

Another defining feature of the BRIFF is that it strives to shine a spotlight on Belgian cinema, particularly through its National Competition, which will bring together nine features taking in fiction, animation and documentary, reflecting the huge diversity of the country’s film output. Two movies will be presented as world premieres. After he showed off Rano (an atmospheric film shot on Madagascar) last year and Holy Tour (a documentary dedicated to Tour de France fans, co-directed with Meryl Fortunat-Rossi, which scooped the Audience Award at the BRIFF) a few years ago, Valéry Rosier is back with Radio Bonheur, a melancholic comedy about love and loss. For their part, Tom Boccara and Wide Ouassale, who hail from the world of live performance, unfurl their singular universe in La Bucolie, their feature debut both starring and directed by them. Audiences will also be able to discover two documentaries that are very different in terms of content and style, but which are each underpinned by a sense of urgency and a poetic vision: Like a Fortress by Lou Colpé and The Price of the Sun by Jerôme Le Maire. Cleverly straddling documentary and fiction, This Is Not a French Film by Tom Adjibi questions the place of racialised actors and actresses on screens. Self-searching and questioning one’s identity are also on the menu in Kwibuka, se souvenir by Jonas D’Adesky, which was first unveiled at Angoulême last year. World-premiered at Annecy, Gregor by Manu Gomez is slightly out of place owing to its informal tone but also its artistic freedom, constituting a striking example of a home-made film set in a radically offbeat world. Lastly, the National Competition will host Frontier, a historical flick by Spanish director Judith Colell, co-produced by Belgium and featuring turns by various Flemish actors, as well as the third feature by Flemish helmer Caroline Strubbe, The Silent Treatment.

Brussels audiences will discover further batches of films in the Directors’ Week and the Focus on Ireland, and even preview screenings of movies that are due to hit movie-theatre screens in September, among many others: Vigilante by Olivier Pairoux, Another Day by Jeanne Herry, A Woman's Life by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet and The Invite by Olivia Wilde, which will bring the festival to a close.