News

France’s Indie Sales has picked up Come Back, the directorial debut from Flemish brothers Jan and Raf Roosens starring Veerle Baetens and her real-life daughter Billie Vlegels.

The film is in post and Indie Sales is launching it at the European Film Market later this month. Kinepolis Film Distribution is handling the Belgian release.

Vlegels plays the teenage daughter of a once-successful techno DJ couple, living with her father after her parents’ divorce. When her mother (Baetens) sets off to make an international comeback, her daughter is thrust into the nocturnal club scene world and finds herself torn between...

Vengeance on a Wet Afternoon: Baetens Prepares a Fatal Reckoning in Grim Debut

Home is most certainly not where the heart is in When It Melts, the directorial debut of Belgian actor Veerle Baetens, adapted from the celebrated novel by Lize Spit. Baetens has long been a recognizable force in Belgian cinema over the past two decades, appearing in slick genre fare, like Erick Van Looy’s Loft (2008), Robin Pront’s The Ardennes (read review) and Oliver Masset-Depasse’s Mothers’ Instinct (2018), while most renowned for Felix Van Groeningen’s searing 2013 drama The Broken Circle Breakdown (read review). She’s chosen a troubling, and perhaps somewhat familiar approach in this trauma induced thriller, which features a disturbed, complex characterization deftly performed by two actors portraying the central character.…...

HBO has rights to the film for central Europe.

Dealer, the debut feature from Belgian actor Jeroen Perceval, which won 10 prizes at this year’s De Ensors Belgian film awards, has sealed some key distribution deals for Austrian sales outfit Fizz-e-Motion.

The film has sold to central Europe (HBO) and Latin America (Encripta), plus a VOD deal for Taiwan (Sky Digi Entertainment).

Having been nominated in 14 categories, Dealer picked up 10 prizes at De Ensors on Saturday, March 12. Categories it won included best film, best director, best supporting actor and the public award.

Dealer follows a 14-year-old drug dealer in a young person’s care home,...

French sales company will show first trailer for drama about rise and fall of infamous Antwerp mega-club.

Paris-based Indie Sales will launch sales on Belgian director Robin Pront’s thriller Zillion, inspired by the rise and fall of the legendary Antwerp club of the same name, at next week’s online European Film Market.

Running from 1997 to 2002, the venue was the brainchild of the controversial tech entrepreneur and dance music lover Frank Verstraeten. It was one of the first mega-clubs that sprang up in Benelux in the late 1990s and drew clubbers from across the region and beyond until it closed under a cloud.

LevelK’s dark comedy “Samuel’s Travels” has sold to Cranked Up Films for North America and the Caribbeans following its world premiere at Fantastic Fest.

Directed by Aik Karapetian, the Latvian-Belgian movie follows Sam, a foreigner who gets lost in the remotest part of Eastern Europe, on the edges of a mythical forest, while searching for his biological father Lagzdins. A minor road accident leads to a chance meeting with a pig-farmer’s daughter whose kind hospitality is a smoke screen to capturing him and making him a slave on the farm.

The movie, which shot mostly in English, stars a mix of established and up-and-coming actors, including Kevin Janssens (“The Ardennes”), Laura Siliņa, Juris Bartkevičs (“Three fold”) and Aigars Vilims (“Piton”). Cranks Up Films is planning to release “Samuel’s Travels” next Spring. It was produced by Gints Grūbe (“Chronicles of Melanie”) at Mistrus Media.

“(‘Samuel’s Travels...

Jeroen Perceval reveals what happened when an actor tested positive for coronavirus.

Screen can reveal a first-look image of Veerle Baetens in Dealer, the feature directorial debut of Belgian actor Jeroen Perceval, which completed shooting in Antwerp during the coronavirus pandemic.

Perceval, best known for his performances in Bullhead, Borgman and The Ardennes, also wrote the feature, which centres on a 14-year-old drug dealer (Sverre Rous) who forms a bond with a successful actor (Ben Segers). Baetens plays the mother of the young dealer.

Perceval began shooting the drama in Antwerp earlier this year with an initial plan to release this month.

Collection of shorts was filmed with Covid-19 safety measures in place by directors including Michael R Roskam (‘Bullhead’).

A collection of films shot during lockdown with a cast that includes Matthias Schoenaerts is to be presented at Re>Connext (Oct 5-31), the annual film and TV showcase run by Flanders Image.

A first look at The Lockdown Shorts, which spans drama, comedy, thriller and horror, will be presented as a works in progress project at the virtual event by producer-directors Gilles Coulier and Maarten Moerkerke.

All 12 films were shot under coronavirus-safe conditions on the same studio set: a prison visiting...

The Quiet Canadian: Pront Returns to the Woods with Canadian Thriller

Belgian director Robin Pront reveals his fixation with rural neo-noir in sophomore film and English language debut The Silencing. With both title and extravagantly macabre but finicky murders reminiscent of past gloriously grisly whodunits such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Pront’s footing on Canadian soil feels less self-assured than his moody 2015 debut The Ardennes (read review). A pair of fine performances from its lead actors makes the over churned narrative a bit more palatable, but the script from first time scribe Micah Ranum feels as overstuffed as it is derivative, focusing on loose strands and red herrings when stronger character development could have allowed for a greater sense of empathy and anxiety for the damaged denizens of a rural Canadian hinterland.…...

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Danish actor best known for playing the conflicted, sardonic Jaime Lannister on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” was eager for his latest film to premiere at South by Southwest last March. In “The Silencing,” Coster-Waldau portrays a solitary hunter who lives in the woods, grappling with the disappearance — and likely murder — of his daughter.

But just a few days before the premiere, the film festival in Texas was canceled as coronavirus cases swept through the United States. Later in the spring, Coster-Waldau was scheduled to be onstage in Los Angeles, in an adaptation of “Macbeth” at the Geffen Playhouse. Instead, he’s been in self-isolation with his family in Denmark, working on his new company — Ill Kippers Productions, with writer Joe Derrick — and taking a break from his 30-year career as an actor.

Coster-Waldau talked to Variety about “The Silencing,” which opens in select theaters and on VOD on Aug.

‘Tailgate’ set to be screened at Cannes’ Marché du Film Online.

Montreal-based sales agent Attraction Distribution has closed deals across Europe and Asia on Dutch road-rage thriller Tailgate.

The film, which Attraction will screen at the Cannes’ Marché du Film Online this week, has sold to the UK (Signature), France (Trade Media), Russia/Cis (Volga), China (Jetsen), Japan (New Select) and South Korea (Challan).

Written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Lodewijk Crijns, the film is produced by Amsterdam-based Topkapi Films and Savage Film, the Belgian production outfit behind Patrick and The Ardennes.

The story begins with a family road trip...

Saban Films will release Robin Pront’s crime thriller “The Silencing,” starring “Game of Thrones” actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Annabelle Wallis and Hero Fiennes Tiffin, the distributor announced Tuesday.

Saban Films executive produced “The Silencing,” and the film was meant to premiere as part of the Midnighters program at this year’s canceled SXSW Film Festival.

No release date has been set.

Also Read: Jim Gaffigan, Josh Hartnett Crime Thriller 'Most Wanted' Acquired by Saban Films

“The Silencing” follows a reformed hunter living in isolation on a wildlife sanctuary who becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he and the local Sheriff set out to track a vicious killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

Pront (“The Ardennes”) directed the film from a debut feature film script by Micah Ranum. Anova Pictures’ Cybill Lui Eppich produced “The Silencing,” and Saban Films, which has...

Micah Ranum wrote screenplay, Anova Pictures’ Cybill Lui Eppich produces.

Saban Films will release Robin Pront’s (The Ardennes) The Silencing, which stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game Of Thrones and had been set to premiere at SXSW before that festival was cancelled.

Annabelle Wallis and Hero Fiennes Tiffin also star.

The official SXSW Midnighters selection centres on a reformed hunter living in isolation on a wildlife sanctuary who becomes involved in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse when he and the local sheriff set out to track a killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

Micah Ranum wrote the screenplay,...

Documentaries and dramas impressed industry professionals at the Ghent event.

Flanders Image’s CONNeXT event in Ghent showcased documentary films for the first time, some of which impressed industry professionals even more than the usual fiction projects.

Pieter Jan De Pue’s Four Brothers, about four Ukrainian siblings torn apart by war, won the work-in-progress award.

The international jury praised how “the story ambitions and scope of the project leaves an undeniable impression…how war can tear apart even the tightest of bonds.”

Bart Van Langendonck of leading Belgian production company Savage Film produces. The project previously won the Cph:Dox Eurimges Co-Production Award.

Beta Cinema has acquired the dark, offbeat comedy “Patrick,” the feature debut of Flemish director Tim Mielants (“Peaky Blinders”), which will world premiere in competition next month at the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival. Variety has the exclusive trailer.

Featuring Kevin Janssens, Jemaine Clement and Bouli Lanners (“Rust and Bone”), “Patrick” is the story of a handyman at his father’s naturist campsite who dedicates his spare time to designing and building furniture. When he loses his trusted hammer, his search to retrieve it takes him to the furthest corner of the campgrounds—a journey that takes on existential meaning when his father passes away. As the life he long took for granted suddenly shifts course, Patrick embarks on a tragicomic quest that might ultimately help him become a new man.

“Patrick” is produced by Bart Van Langendonck of Savage Film. Beta Cinema will handle all international rights outside Benelux.

Robin Pront ofThe Ardennes directs.

Annabelle Wallis will co-star opposite Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in thriller The Silencing, which Xyz Films is introducing to worldwide buyers at the Efm.

Xyz Films jointly represents Us rights with Endeavor Content on the story of a reformed hunter who gets involved in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse when he and the local sheriff set out to track a killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

Robin Pront, who directed the 2016 Belgian Oscar submission The Ardennes, directs from a Nicholl Fellowship-winning screenplay by Micah Ranum. Cybill Lui of Anova Pictures serves as producer, and...

Annabelle Wallis will star alongside Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in The Silencing, a thriller that will now be helmed by The Ardennes director Robin Pront. Production will begin in the spring in Canada, and the news comes as Xyz Films and Endeavor Content team on U.S. sales for the project at the European Film Market in Berlin.

The pic, with a Nicholl Fellowship-winning script by Micah Ranum, follows a reformed hunter (Coster-Waldau) who becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he and the local sheriff set out to track a vicious killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

Cybill Lui of Anova Pictures is producing, Wilding Pictures’ Matt Code is co-producing, and Xyz Films is executive producing. Xyz is also repping global sales at Efm.

Coster-Waldau boarded the project at Cannes this year, when Taboo helmer Anders Engstom was aboard to direct; we hear a...

The Mummy and Peaker Blinders star Annabelle Wallis is set to co-star with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in The Silencing, which Xyz is repping in Berlin (and co-repping with Endeavor Content for the U.S.).

Being directed by Robin Pront, whose debut feature The Ardennes was Belgium’s foreign-language entry for the Academy Awards in 2016, the film is based on the Nicholl Fellowship-winning script by Micah Ranum and follows a reformed hunter who becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he sets out with the local sheriff to track a vicious killer.

Cybill Lui produces for Anova Pictures,...

Hottest presentations of upcoming Flemish films also include multicultural family film Binti; Patrice Toye’s Tench; and Gust van den Berghe’s Rain Anyway.

The word on everyone’s lips at this year’s Connext, the industry event organised by Flanders Image, was, “What will be the next Girl?”

Last year, Lukas Dhont’s transgender story was presented as a Work In Progress at Connext and is now one of the most lauded films of 2018, winning the Camera d’Or at Cannes and now representing Belgium in the foreign-language Oscar race.

It’s wildly different than Girl, but the buzziest...

Hottest presentations of upcoming Flemish films also include multicultural family film Binti; Patrice Toye’s Tench; and Gust van den Berghe’s Rain Anyway.

The word on everyone’s lips at this year’s Connext, the industry event organized by Flanders Image, was, “What will be the next Girl?”

Last year, Lukas Dhont’s transgender story was presented as a Work In Progress at Connext and is now one of the most lauded films of 2018, winning the Camera d’Or at Cannes and now representing Belgium in the foreign Oscar race.

It’s wildly different than Girl, but the buzziest...

The film was a project at last year’s CONNeXT! in Ghent.

Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielants is to start shooting Patrick, starring Kevin Janssens, this summer in Belgium. It is produced by Bart Van Langendonck of Savage Films.

Patrick, which was presented as a project at last year’s CONNeXT! in Ghent, is an existential comedy drama set in a naturist campsite.

The project has been put together as a Belgium-Netherlands-Germany coproduction. Further partners include Eyeworks, Topkapi and Versus.

Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Cosmos, the first feature film in 15 years from Polish director Andrzej Żuławski, whose horror pic Possession starring Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani played at Cannes in 1981. The indie distributor plans a theatrical release this summer before a VOD rollout in the fall.

Adapted by Witold Gombrowicz’s absurdist novel, Cosmos centers on Witold (Jonathan Genet), who has just failed the bar, and his companion Fuchs (Johan Libéreau), who has recently quit his fashion job. During a stay at a guesthouse, an incident launches Witold’s reality into a whirlwind of tension, histrionics, foreboding omens, and surrealistic logic as he becomes obsessed with the guesthouse owner’s newly married daughter Lena (Victoria Guerra).

Film Movement has acquired Robin Pront’s debut feature film The Ardennes, which is from Belgium’s 2012 Foreign Language Oscar nominee Bullhead producer Savage Films. A 2016 theatrical and VOD release is planned.

Matthias Schoenarts of Rust and Bone has landed two starring roles in Michael Roskam's The Faithful and Robin Pront's The Ardeness. Variety reports that both the films are being produced by Savage Film's Bart Van Langendonck, the same company behind Roskam's Bullhead. First up, The Faithful follows a crime gang in Brussells and is being co-produced by Stone Angels' Pierre-Ange Le Pogam who said "I've been wanting to work with Michael since I met him and watched 'Bullhead." As far as The Ardennes written by Jeroen Perceval, the film's being described as Fargo meets Trainspotting and is a road movie following three Belgian losers who take a fateful trip to dispose of a corpse in The Ardennes forest, close to the border of France.