Brussels Film Festival is 10 years old

by Aurore Engelen

15/05/2012 - The Brussels Film Festival will celebrate its tenth birthday next month from June 8 to 16. For this exceptional anniversary, the festival has pulled out all the stoppers. Several tempting DJ sets have been announced on the party front (no less than Carl Barât and Saul Williams), but there will also be prestigious avant-premieres in the programme, including for To Rome with Love [trailer], the new film by Woody Allen, who will also be in front of Sophie Lellouche’s camera in Paris-Manhattan (beside Alice Taglioni and Patrick Bruel), and the new film by Jean-Paul Rouve, Quand je serai petit (lit. “When I am younger”), with a first class cast of Miou-Miou, Claude Brasseur, Benoît Poelvoorde, Gilles Lellouche, and Xavier Beauvois.

In the competition, there will be Clip [trailer, film focus] by Maja Miloš, a teen drama that was a sensation at the Rotterdam Film Festival, where it won two awards, Death for Sale [trailer, film focus], Moroccan filmmaker Faouzi Bensaïdi’s latest film produced by Entre chien et loup, My Brother the Devil [trailer] by Sally el Hosaini (United Kingdom), winner of the Europa Cinemas Label in Berlin, and No Rest for the Wicked [trailer] by Enrique Urbizu, a Spanish version of Bad Lieutenant that won no less than six Goyas last February.

In the Panorama section, two documentaries stand out. Italy love it or leave it by Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi, who travelled across the country in search of those who still believed in it, and Couleur de peau : miel (lit. “Skin colour: honey”), by Jung and Laurent Boileau, an unusual project that mixes animation and real-life shots to tell the story of the 200,000 Korean children dispersed all over the world since the Korean War through filmmaker Jung’s own tale. With this autobiographical project, he revisits his acceptance of his “diversity”. The film, produced in Belgium by Artémis, will be released in Belgium by Cinéart.

As a bonus, the festival will pay tribute to the legendary building that will host it (Flagey, and its Studio 4) with a series of musical documentaries in the programme.