After a noted passage at the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes and the 3rd edition of the Belgian Magritte awards with A Perdre la Raison, Joachim Lafosse started writing a new screenplay, inspired by the Arch of Zoe case, an association which made the news in 2007 when the Chadian police arrested participants in a “humanitarian” rescue operation, ready to take 103 Chadian “orphans” to Europe. The director of Nue Propriété and Élève Libre once more looks at a news item to study the mechanisms which brought people of good will to commit shady acts. The film stars Vincent Lindon, Valérie Donzelli, Emilie Dequenne, Reda Kateb, Yannick Renier, Catherine Salée and Stéphane Bissot; Joachim Lafosse, still produced by Versus (never change a winning team!) will shoot nine days in Belgium, then 35 days in the Moroccan desert. The adventure starts mid-March 2014 and might just aim for a certain Festival, as the release copy of Chevaliers is scheduled for March 2015.
Black, filmed entirely in Belgium, is a 100% Belgian project, started in Flanders by Caviar, but filmed in French by completely bilingual foreign-born directors. Adil El Arbi and Billal Fallah are no strangers. Their short film Broeders (winner at the Film Festival of Ghent) won them one of the precious Wildcards from the VAF, making it possible to shoot their first film, Image. They do not like wasting time and have already written a new screenplay, a complicated love story between Mavela, a member of the Black Bronx gang and Marwan, a member of a rival gang. Within a violent atmosphere, anchored in a certain reality of Brussels, which the directors promise not to embellish nor fake, she is brutally obliged to choose between loyalty and love. The cast will consist of actors from Brussels, recruited on the spot by the production. Filming will start this summer.
The third project is also 100% Belgian. Le Choix de Peindre is a documentary made for television by Henry de Gerlache, produced by Alizé. He will follow in the footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh in the region of Mons-Borinage, dating back to 1878. Van Gogh arrived by foot to evangelise the poorest miners living between Cuesmes and Hornu. Two years he will live in the middle of this misery and the bowels of the earth, to decide his future: become a painter. His life choice will forever change his own story and that of art. The project is right in time to receive a lot of extra attention thanks to Mons 2015. Van Gogh will receive a lot of coverage then in Belgium but also in Europe.
The last selected project is something different. Nexus Factory submitted it, after a long preparation with their co-producers, Bidibull from Luxembourg and Partizan from France. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, who also wrote the screenplay, will direct the film, but the casting will be anglo-saxon, with Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasly in Harry Potter) and Robert Sheehan (known from the series The Misfits and Love/Hate or the trilogy Red Riding adapted from David Peace’s work). The screenplay is rather surprising, as it follows an American agent sent to the United Kingdom to meet … Stanley Kubrick. The time is July 1969 and the CIA is afraid that the Apollo mission will not make it to the moon for landing. They then decide to ask the maker of 2001, A Space Odyssey to film a fake moon landing, just in case… Of course, everything will go haywire on the tones of a soundtrack full of psychedelic, illicit substances and scheming between dangerous gangsters. This crazy film will be shot in April and May, partially in Belgium (9 days). Dame Blanche Genval and Digital Graphics will work on an important part of the post-production.
