Annick Christiaens

Four first short films by young filmmakers. An initiative by director Houda Benyamina, produced by her association "1000 visages" (1000 faces).

Open details →

J. Kessels is the story of the bizarre road trip taken by a French literary pulp writer with his favourite character J. Kessels. The journey takes them from Tilburg to the Hamburg Reeperbahn in Kessels' old American 'Kamikaze' clunker as they seek out cheating dealer. When they get there they find a corpse in the trunk of the Kamikaze: easy to find, but how do you get rid of it?

Open details →

A look at the life of French designer Yves Saint Laurent from the beginning of his career in 1958 when he met his lover and business partner, Pierre Berge.

Open details →

François decides to participate in the Tour de France alone, inspiring a wave of media enthusiasm, much to the chagrin of the Tour's pros.

Open details →

A workaholic businessman provides well for his son San, but the emotional neglect since his mother died a few years ago grimly affects the shy knave. In San's heroic daydreams, a cool father leads him into modern Quichote exploits, yet even those tend to turn sour. Slipping, like his grades, into rebellion and school incidents, San, who just went on a fugue, becomes the prime suspect after a schoolgirl turned novice drug slut has been beaten into a coma. The clueless police and irresponsible school staff will probably blame San. Her friend, a regular drug harlot, is the worried-sick father's only lead to find San and the truth, and shamelessly exploits that.

Open details →

Vermist is a Dutch language crime drama produced by Belgian broadcaster VT4 and Netherlands production company Eyeworks. It is broadcast on VT4 and a French language version—Urgence disparitions—is shown by W9. Based on the characters and background of the successful Flemish film Vermist, the first episode was broadcast on March 25, 2008. A second season was broadcast in 2010.

Open details →

Martin is a successful man with a well-paid job at a pharmaceutical company. He lives with his family in an upscale neighborhood of a Belgian city, and is already making plans for another home in Tuscany, Italy. However, soon after he becomes the victim of an embezzlement scandal, everything begins to take a turn for the worse. Martin will soon be involved in a series of events and decisions that will put an end to the stability he has achieved in his life, and cause him and his family to fall into a downward spiral together.

Open details →

After almost thirty years, Germaine, Firmin's great love, suddenly returns to her hometown. Firmin is overjoyed and determined to win Germaine's heart back, but Germaine rejects his advances. Then Mohammed Boutrous, a young and talented boxer, seeks out Firmin. He wants Firmin to train him. Firmin accepts, hoping to regain his honor and the love of his life...

Open details →

Open details →

Open details →

Antwerp, early June. On a sweltering Friday, eight people dream of a different life. There is wind and music, police and paranoia, gossip and arguing. There's an ancient virus, a lost Frisbee, a dead horse, and, wandering the city, an enigmatic phenomenon called Windman who feels everyone's pain but can't seem to help himself. In the evening a party awaits them...

Open details →

August 1939. The fate of four young people, Ramona, Georges, Brigitte and Hans is upset by the outbreak of war.

Open details →

Ludovic, a 12-year-old boy from a well-off home who is neglected by his parents, who are part of the art scene, falls head over heels in love with Sofie, the daughter of a piano teacher, when he has to pass a test of courage in the schoolyard during recess. The cheeky girl with the two pigtails likes the boy who is interested in her. They soon get closer and meet in secret places in the city. It is the first love for both of them. Shortly after Sofie's father catches the two lovers in bed together in Sofie's room, Ludovic is sentaway from Brussels to spend time with his grandparents. But Sofie can't stand it without Ludovic and runs away from home to be with him. The lovers hide in abandoned buildings on the Belgian coast. While parents and police search for the couple, both youngsters find that it is pretty hard to beon their own, especially since an ominous photographer is lurking around the children.

Open details →

Samuel's life is in shambles and he wants to end it all, but then he saves his desperate neighbor by pretending to be her guardian angel.

Open details →

'De Kotmadam' was a classic Flemish comedy television series, that aired from 1991 to 2024, meaning the show is the longest running Belgian sitcom in terms of time and amounts of episodes and seasons. The series revolves around Jeanne Piens, who owns a small sweet shop in the centre of Leuven and rents out several rooms of her house to students studying in the city. She is a caring type and loves all her students. Her husband Jef Liefooghe works for the city's gardening department. Except for the last season, their friend Odilon Bonheur, a naïve warden in the local prison, visits regularly to give or seek help.

Open details →

Charles Baudelaire was one of the giants of 19th-century French poetry, and he earned his position among that nation's luminaries through the poems in one slim volume, entitled Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil). A perfectionist to the extreme, he struggled with every word of those few poems for many years before he consented to see them published. When he did, six of them were condemned by the state censors as obscene. It was surely a powerful blow to him to have such a significant part of his life's work so rudely suppressed. This courtroom drama follows him at the 1857 trial at which he defended his works. The filmmaker has chosen to symbolically re-enact certain poems about the love of a woman as they are being read for the court. It is easy to imagine that, as was certainly the case for the trial of Oscar Wilde in England, this courtroom trial was a form of punishment for his publicly dissolute lifestyle.

Open details →

This 2-part TV film, adapted from an autobiography, tells the childhood of writer François Cavanna, son of an Italien emigrant and a French mother.

Open details →

Open details →

Wildschut starts with a violent casino robbery in Knokke. Criminals Jim and the badly wounded Charlie flee with the loot, but their car breaks down in the foggy Flemish countryside. They seek shelter and break into 'Wildschut', a remote, run-down farmhouse.The gangsters immediately take the resident Deleye family hostage. After Charlie dies from his injuries, the psychopathic Jim is left alone with the captives. A tense psychological mind game unfolds, filled with threat and humiliation as Jim plays the family members against each other.While a local police chief starts a clumsy search, tension builds to a boiling point. The father tries to fight back, leading to a bloody, explosive finale where the survivors must do anything to escape Jim's madness.If you want, I can also translate the film review into English, or provide the English cast list and international titles.AI-reacties kunnen fouten bevatten. Meer informatie

Open details →

After debuting in 1983 with Casta Diva, Eric de Kuyper immediately made Naughty Boys in 1984, a film that he himself described as “a sad musical comedy” in which he pays homage to the old musicals and comedies. The film is set in an unspecified time, somewhere between both World Wars in a large English country house. Six gentlemen in dinner jackets try to maintain the atmosphere of a party that has just ended. Naughty Boys was the second film De Kuyper made with friends and students, but here for the first time they were joined by a “professional” actress, Linda Polan.

Open details →