19/03/2009

The Dutch/Belgian co-production C’est déjà l’été (“It’s Already Summer”) has started filming in the small Belgian industrial town Seraing, close to Liège. The bleak and dreary location is well-known to cinephiles around the world as the basis of many of the films made by the Dardenne brothers.

C’est déjà l’été is the debut feature of Dutchman Martijn Smits and is one of the projects that benefitted from funding of the De Verbeelding (“The Imagination”) Fund, a joint venture of the Mondriaan Foundation and the Dutch Film Fund.

De Verbeelding seeks to (partially) fund artistically inclined feature film projects that strongly emphasise the visual aspects of filmmaking. Smits’ film was only one out of four projects out of a total of 51 submitted projects that received a €300,000 grant. Recent Dutch Berlinale Forum title Winter Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], from Sonja Wyss, was one of the other selected projects.

C’est déjà l’été was written by the director and Bastiaan Kroeger and tells the story of father Jean (Belgian actor Patrick Descamps) and his teenage children (Benjamin Willem, Julie Anson) who try to survive in Seraign after he has been laid off at a steel factory, a fact he keeps hidden from his offspring.

The film is produced by Dutch outfit De Productie in co-production with the Belgian branch of European production house Tarantula. Besides the support from De Verbeelding, C’est déjà l’été is also backed by the Rotterdam Media Fonds.