New films by directors Lukas Dhont, Ana Teodora Mihai and Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah are among 14 new projects to share €3 million in funding from Screen Flanders.
Flemish director Dhont, who was Oscar nominated for his 2023 feature Close, received €200,000 for his new feature Coward.
Dhont joins forces again with co-writer Angelo Tijssens for the film, whose plot details are not yet available. The Reunion, the production company set up by Michiel and Lukas Dhont, takes the lead in the film’s production, with Lumière Publishing releasing in the Benelux.
Heysel 85, which received €250,000, is directed by Ana Teodora Mihai whose 2021 film La Civil played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.
It is based on real events about the Heysel Stadium disaster, when 39 people died before the start of the 1985 European Cup final at Brussels’ Heysel Stadium. It centres on the mayor’s daughter having to confront her father, those in power and human nature. The script is by Lode Desmet and Isabelle Darras. Violet Braeckman, Matteo Simoni and Josse De Pauw star.
Flemish company Menuetto is producing Heysel 85 in co-production with Belgium’s Les Films du Fleuve, the Netherlands’ Topkapi, Germany’s Leitwolf Filmproduktion and Romania’s Mobra Film. The distributor for the Benelux is Kinepolis Film Distribution.
Belgian-Moroccan filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, whose most recent release was Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawerence, have secured €250,000 backing for Gangstas For Life, the final part of the Gangstas trilogy. It sees the Gangstas try to escape the police by fleeing to Dubai. But Dutch drug criminal Dzhengis Khan is out for revenge and wants to settle scores once and for all.
The script for the action feature is by Ruben Vermeersch. The cast sees Matteo Simoni, Norah Gharib, Said Boumazoighe and Junes Lazaar reprising their leading roles. The film will be mainly shot on location in Antwerp, in addition to scenes shot in Dubai. Gangstas For Life is produced by the Flemish company A Team Productions, in co-production with Belgium’s 10.80 Films Netherlands’ and Fiction Valley.
Meanwhile, the Dhont brothers’ production company The Reunion is also behind Julian, the feature film debut of director Cato Kusters, which secured €50,000. It is about Fleur and her wife Julian who want to get married in all 22 countries where they are allowed to do so. But their journey is suddenly interrupted when Julian falls severely ill. The co-producers are Belgium’s Les Films du Fleuve and Netherlands’ Topkapi. Angelo Tijssens and Cato Kusters wrote the script, based on the novel by Fleur Pierets.
Tijssens is involved in the script for another two films: Dust and Jonah Was Here.
Dust is directed by Anke Blondé with a script by Tijssens. It centres on two entrepreneurs in 1990s Belgium who are told that their fraudulent activities will be exposed, and they have just one day to come to terms with their loved ones, themselves and each other. Arieh Worthalter and Jan Hammenecker star. Dust is produced by Flemish company A Private View, in co-production with Poland’s Shipsboy, Greece’s Heretic, the UK’s Bêtes Sauvages and Belgium’s Tarantula. Kinepolis Film Distribution will distribute the film in the Benelux.
Angelo Tijssens has also collaborated on the script for Jonah Was Here, directed by Nathalie Teirlinck. It is about a divorced neurologist, overcome with grief, who moves into his late son’s dorm room and also decides to take over his student life in the hope of coming closer to him. Jonah Was Here is produced by De Wereldvrede, in co-production with Belgium’s Frakas Productions and the Netherlands’ Volya Films.
Meanwhile, Cypriot-Greek-Belgian co-production Life is Cruel to Basilia Belushi, secured €80,000. Written and directed by Stelios Kammitsis, it is about three sisters in their forties who meet in Ghent after many years apart to celebrate their mother Basilia’s eightieth birthday. But there is a strange atmosphere, and then suddenly Basilia disappears. International sales are handled by M-Appeal.
Seven other series projects also received backing in Screen Flanders’ latest round of funding.
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