22/10/2020 - The Brussels Regional Investment Fund benefits from additional funds to support the audiovisual sector

Directors Florence Hainaut and Myriam Leroy on the shoot of Sale Putte

screen.brussels has just announced the results of its 14th session, as well as the attribution of an additional envelope worth €1M to support the Brussels audiovisual sector severely hit by the Covid crisis.

Half of this funding will go to about 20 projects supported in 2019 and 2020 (partially offsetting the extra costs linked either to the resuming of interrupted film shoots, or to the implementation of new health protocols), and the other half will be dedicated to increasing the number of projects supported at this session.

21 new projects are therefore helped by the fund: 4 fiction features, 5 series, 3 animation projects, 8 documentaries and 1 virtual reality project.

Standing out among them is the new feature from Belgian filmmaker Benoît Mariage (Les Convoyeurs attendent, Cowboy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benoît Mariage
film profile], Scouting for Zebras [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Habib [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benoît Mariage
film profile], which will star Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Rouve and Bouli Lanners. The film is produced by Daylight Films (Belgium), and co-produced by A Private View (Belgium), Formosa Productions and Polaris Films (France) and CAB Productions (Switzerland).

Another project is the series 1985, an ambitious co-production between TV channels from either side of the language border, the RTBF and the VRT. The series centres on a real life political event which united the country at the time, almost despite itself: the story of the Brabant Killers.

screen.brussels is also supporting Europe-C19, a collective documentary about the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe seen through the eyes of 5 European auteurs: Jaco Van Dormael (Belgium), Michele Placido (Italy), Michael Winterbottom (UK), Fernando León de Aranoa (Spain) and Julia von Heinz (Germany). The film is produced by Tarantula Belgique, Maze Pictures (Germany) and Notorious Pictures (Italy).

Finally, also worth noting among the selected projects is another documentary, Sale Putte, directed by Belgian journalists Florence Hainaut and Myriam Leroy, and produced by Kwassa Films. The film is based on the experiences of the two directors, harassed online for several years, who decide to bring to justice their most violent harasser. 

(Translated from French)