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In “The Elephant and the Butterfly,” Antoine (Thomas Blanchard), mild and bearded, with a look of telegraphed regret, shows up at the home of his former partner, Camille (Judith Chemla), to ask how she’s doing. She laughs in his face, just about choking on her sarcastic chuckles. These two haven’t seen each other in five years, and she, for one, is fluent in the harsher dialect of post-divorce. Since they have a young daughter, Elsa (Lina Doillon), who lives with her mother, we’re curious to see how the hostility will play out.

An odd fact is then revealed. Elsa, who is five, has no idea who Antoine is. But her long stare follows him out the window, with a look that says, “There’s something about him…”

There are, of course, middle-class fathers who’ve never gotten to know their children — or, more accurately, have abandoned them.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne among producers on Belgian family drama.

Blue Fox Entertainment has picked up world sales rights to The Elephant And The Butterfly, on which Martin Scorsese serves as executive producer, and will commence sales at the Efm.

Belgian filmmaker Amélie Van Elmbt directed the French-language film produced by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and Delphine Tomson of Les Films de Fleuve.

Thomas Blanchard plays a young man who returns to his hometown and reunites with his former lover. Fate intervenes and leaves him alone in the care of the daughter he has never met. Judith Chemla and Lina Doillon also star.

Van Elmbt and Matthieu de Braconier wrote the screenplay. Emma Tillinger Koskoff, and Chad A. Verdi and Michelle Verdi of Verdi Productions served as executive producers alongside Scorsese.

Financing are the Federation Wallonie-Brussels, Rtbf, Be TV, Casa Kafka Pictures Movie Tax Shelter Empowered by Belfius, Screen Brussels, Eurimages and Why Not...

★★★☆☆ Notions of marginalisation, responsibility and the ambiguities of nature versus nurture all collide in Antoine Cuypers' handsome and austere feature debut, Préjudice. The film is built around enormously compelling performances from Thomas Blanchard and Nathalie Baye, as an antagonistic son and mother. They take the leads in a taut chamber piece that pulls at the loose threads of a family with a precision for excruciating social tension and a refusal to offer easy answers to thematic waters which in turn beget labyrinthine ethical tributaries. Both compassion and frustration are easy to justify throughout the drama - but precisely who is deserving of which remains a far murkier question.

Exclusive: Drama starring Isabelle Huppert due to shoot this June.

Les Films du Losange has taken on sales of Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come (L’Avenir), starring Isabelle Huppert as a woman embarking on a new life after her husband leaves her for another woman.

“We’ll kick off sales at Cannes on the back of the script. The film is due to shoot in Paris in June,” said Les Films du Losange head of sales Agathe Valentin.

Huppert stars as Nathalie, a settled philosophy teacher who has been married for years to Heinz, with whom she has two grown-up children. They stay together out of habit and common intellectual pursuits – he also teaches philosophy — rather than for love.

But one day Heinz announces he has fallen for another woman and moves out. At the same time, Nathalie’s possessive, time-consuming mother passes away. As the summer holidays loom, Nathalie is staring...

Drama starring Belgian musician Arno (pictured) marks feature debut of filmmaker Antoine Cuypers.

Paris-based Les Films du Losange is to handle international sales and theatrical distribution in France of Prejudice, the feature debut of Belgian filmmaker Antoine Cuypers.

The film, currently in post-production, marks the first feature for Benoît Roland’s Brussels-based Wrong Men production company as main producer, having previously been involved with titles on a co-production basis.

The Benelux rights for Prejudice will be handled by Cinéart.

After his short film A New Old Story, Cuypers has turned to a ‘huis clos’ family drama featuring Nathalie Baye, Belgian musician Arno Hintjens and Cesar-nominated Ariane Labed, who won best actress at Locarno 2014 for her role in Fidelio, Alice’s Odyssey.

The drama begins during a family meal when 32 year-old Cedric (Thomas Blanchard) learns that his sister (Labed) is expecting a baby. While the news is met with genuine excitement by the whole family, Cedric, who still...