email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

FUNDING Belgium

VAF backs Urbanus’ big-screen comeback

by 

The Vlaams Audiovisual Fond (VAF) has just announced the results of its June 2010 session. The selection includes two projects set to start shooting soon: Frank Van Passel’s Altijd Tevreeden and Nic Balthazar’s Team Mario, both based on real-life events that left their mark on Flemish society.

In the middle of last century’s Great War, Armand, a rather eccentric car enthusiast, dreams of breaking the speed record held by La Jamais Contente (“The Never Happy One”), an electric car that exceeded 100km/hr for the first time in 1899. He sets to work and designs his own racing car, La Toujours Contente (“The Always Happy One”).

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

The task is all the more arduous as Armand has his work cut out for him with his feathered friends. In 1917, in Prussian-occupied Belgium, carrier pigeons attain military rank.

For this “war comedy”, Van Passel has hired Urbanus as both co-screenwriter and actor in his first on-screen appearance since 1993. Urbanus has been bringing a smile to Flemish people’s faces for almost 30 years, both in comic books and on stage. He enjoyed his hour of glory in cinema at the end of the 1980s in Hector and Koko Flanel and his big-screen comeback is sure to attract attention.

Altijd Tevreeden’s producer Caviar Films must have thought the same thing. The company will receive €650,000 in production funding.

Meanwhile, Balthazar is getting ready to shoot his second feature after the popular and critical hit Ben X [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nic Balthazar
interview: Peter Bouckaert
film profile
]
. This time, the director will focus on the death of Mario Verstraete, the first patient to have taken advantage of the euthanasia law which was passed in Belgium in 2002.

Balthazar wants to make “not a film about death, but a film about life”. Drawing inspiration from the true story of Mario, he will also turn to those in his entourage. Team Mario will be produced by Eyeworks.

The VAF has also granted production backing to John Shank’s minority feature Last Winter, co-produced by Limited Adventures, Tarantula Belgium, France’s Silex Films and Switzerland’s PCT Cinémas.

VAF development funding will go to Felix Van Groeningen’s The Broken Circle Breakdown Featuring the Cover-Ups of Alabama, Indra Siera’s The Treatment and Bas Devos’s Just In Time for Something.

Finally, screenwriting grants have been awarded to Jan Van Dyck’s Vier Zomers, Raf Reyntjens’s Paradise Trips and Dimitri Karakatsanis’s De Leraar.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy