12/02/2012

Wallonie Bruxelles Images manager Eric Franssen is the first to admit that the performance of French-speaking Belgian cinema at this year’s Berlinale is ... modest: four films in the European Film Market, two co-productions in the Panorama, from an annual production of 15-20 features.

”Our producers are focusing on the Côte d’Azur – we have at least two hot tickets for Cannes, which also keep us busy here,” explained Janssen, pointing at Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children and Frédéric Fonteyne’s Tango Libre, which are both due for local release in the spring.

Last year Wallonie Bruxelles Images represented three Belgian entries at Cannes, including the Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid with a Bike [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
film profile], which won the Jury Grand Prix, and the films bookending the Directors’ Fortnight, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy’s The Fairy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
film profile], and Bouli Lanners’ The Giants [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Bouli Lanners
film profile].

In his first film since Private Lessons (2008), Lafosse has cast Niels Arestrup, Emilie Dequenne and Tahar Rahim in Our Children, the story of a doctor who brings a young Moroccan boy back to Belgium to raise him as his own son. The boy grows up, reaches adulthood, falls in love and starts a family. The young wife, however, finds herself trapped in an oppressive emotional atmosphere – a tragic outcome is inevitable. The Versus Production feature is sold at the European Film Market by Les Films du Losange.

In Fonteyne’s Tango Libre, François Damien plays JC, a prison guard without a story, hiding behind rules, with one passion – tango. One night at dance class he meets Alice, and they dance together; the next day he sees her in prison, visiting one man, then another – she is in fact married to two inmates. Prison rules prohibit the guards from socializing with the prisoners’ families – but for the first time, he is ready to break the rules. Anne Paulicevich and Sergi Lopez co-star in the film from Artémis Productions, marketed by Films Distribution.