Brussels, a Belgian story
Through a variety of works, Belgian directors make a point of presenting us with a Brussels full of character. In 1972, Brussels director Chantal Akerman portrayed a dark and harsh capital inJeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The film depicts the daily life of a Brussels woman who, following the death of her husband, has to prostitute herself to support her son. Akerman's film was the masterpiece of her career, inspiring such renowned directors as Gus Van Sant and Michael Haneke. A year later, Benoît Lamy directed Home Sweet Home, giving Belgium some of its first international awards, including Best Film at the Montreal Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize in Moscow. Jaco Van Dormael, born in 1957 in the commune of Ixelles, is another famous Brussels filmmaker. After the triumph of Toto le héros (partly shot in the Cité du Logis in Watermael-Boisfort), Van Dormael visited the Belgian capital a second time in 1996 to shoot his feature film Le Huitième Jour. This sensitive work depicts the encounter between workaholic Harry (Daniel Auteuil) and Georges (Belgian Pascal Duquenne), a young man with Down's syndrome. In another register, Olivier Van Hoofstadt released Dikkenek in 2006, following in the footsteps of C'est arrivé près de chez vous (1992). This comedy, which has gained a cult following in Belgium, is set in Brussels and features a host of well-known actors: Marion Cotillard, François Damiens, Mélanie Laurent, Catherine Jacob, Jean-Luc Couchard, Dominique Pinon and others. Like C'est arrivé près de chez vous, Dikkenek divided the critics, going from "silly and perverse" to humorous masterpiece in a fraction of a second. In 2008, the plot of JCVD (by Mabrouk El Mechri, a Franco-Belgian-Luxembourg co-production) takes place in the commune of Schaerbeek and revolves around a Belgian icon, the famous Jean-Claude Van Damme. In 2009, Brussels-based director Nabil Ben Yadir made a name for himself with Les Barons. Shot on location in several districts of the Belgian capital (Molenbeek, Saint-Gilles, Forest...), this comedy follows the daily lives of four unemployed friends, experts in shenanigans, posing as the local Barons. In 2014, filmmaker Erik Van Looy directed the very American thriller Vertiges. That same year, in Jaco Van Dormael's Le Tout Nouveau Testament (2014), Poelvoorde plays an ugly, dirty and mean God whose work is turned upside down by his daughter's decision to leak the date and time of death of every person on Earth. Little Ea then sets off in search of six new apostles to write the "brand new testament". As for Black by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (an adaptation of two novels by Flemish writer Dirk Bracke), it shows a dark and violent Brussels, that of urban gangs. Equally dark, Michiel Blanchart's thriller La nuit se traîne (2024) makes Brussels a character in its own right.
Events and institutions
In 1938, Brussels acquired a major cinema asset: La Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (Koninklijk Belgisch Filmarchief in Dutch). Founded by filmmaker Henri Storck, journalist André Thirifays and politician Pierre Vermeyien, the institution's aim is to select and preserve a collection of films whose particularity is to have a historical, aesthetic or technical aspect that transcends time. In other words, works that could be described as "cult". The Cinematheque also collects a wide range of documentation relating to the world of the 7th art. More commonly known as the Cinematek, it also organizes screenings of the works in storage, to the delight of cinephiles at home and abroad.
As for events, every year Brussels hosts a number of festivals celebrating Belgian cinema in all its forms, starting with the most famous of them all: Les Magritte du cinéma (named after the famous Belgian painter René Magritte), the equivalent of the Césars in France. For the record, since 2012, a strange and self-proclaimed Académie des Machins has been handing out awards "in all partiality and in the most bad faith" to the men behind the scenes of Belgian cinema, the technicians. On the eve of the Magritte ceremony, the entire world of Belgian cinema gathers in good spirits for a chance to win a Moule d'or... a prize that reflects Belgian humor. Other festivals include the BIFFF (Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival), the Brussels Film Festival and the BSFF (Brussels Short Film Festival). Brussels is also home to the renowned Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle (INSAS), which trains new technicians for the world of cinema. Benoît Poelvoorde and Rémy Belvaux both graduated from the school, and are currently directing C'est arrivé près de chez vous as part of their graduation project.
Internationally
In Belgium, there is a tax exemption initiated by the federal government to encourage the development of the audiovisual sector in the country. It encourages companies to invest in the audiovisual sector in exchange for an attractive tax break. As the Tax Shelter is available to all Belgian companies or Belgian branches of a foreign company, it considerably increases the development of the film industry in the flat country. In this context, many international film shoots come to Belgium and the capital. Among the most famous are Chez Gino (2011, by Samuel Benchetrit) whose plot takes place entirely in Brussels, Boule et Bill (2012) by Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier, The Art of Running Away (2012) by Stephen McCauley, De rouille et d'os (2012) by Jacques Audiard, starring Marion Cotillard and Belgian Matthias Schoenaerts, Michel Gondry's L'Écume des jours (2013), Dany Boon's Supercondriaque (2014) and Tom Hooper's The Danish Girl (2015) (also starring Matthias Schoenarts), which gives us some great shots of the Parc Royal in Brussels as well as the café À la mort subite. In 2018, it's the impressive Kursk by the famous Dane Thomas Vinterberg, which passes by the Excelsior establishment on Place Cardinal Mercier in the commune of Jette. More recently, Brian de Palma is passing through several Belgian cities, including Brussels, for his film Domino: The Silent War (2019, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Guy Pearce and Carice van Houten).
