Following the Golden Palm it won at the Cannes Film Festival, L’Enfant will only be released in French cinemas in October. This should see quite a lot of high profile events. Not so in Belgium! Cinéart wanted to take full advantage of the September schedules – usually rather devoid of new movies – to make the release an event. They organised a massive release, opening on 42 screens in 28 cities, in all three regions of the country. This rather impressive opening also benefits from help from Screenvision.
Serge Plasch decided to stir up things, because he was impressed by the second Cannes triumph for the Dardenne brothers, and also because he does not really understand the relative lack of interest shown by the Walloon audience when its regional films hit the cinemas.
The event, chaired by Jean-Claude Marcourt, the minister responsible for Wallimage, was very typical of the city of Liège, hence very warm. The MD for the cinema publicity board handed a €20,000 cheque to the Dardenne brothers. This covered most of the cost for a 3 week (35–36–37) nationwide campaign, including a 20 second ad that will be widely shown in every cinema in the country.
This is, without a shadow of a doubt, an unusually strong campaign for a Walloon film. This should show Belgian distributors that marketing campaigns in cinemas are at least as effective as ads taken out in magazines or at bus stops.
