“The number of talents and good films is amazing,” says Renata Santoro, head of programming at Giornate Degli Autori.
Connext, Flanders Image’s annual film and TV showcase, taking place from October 9-10 in Antwerp, is fast growing its reputation on the international stage.
Paolo Bertolin, a member of the selection committee of the Venice Film Festival, visited the Antwerp-based showcase for the first time in 2022 with a simple ambition to meet Belgian talent and discover the best up -and- coming projects from the region.
Among the projects he saw was Fien Troch’s Holly, a then work-in-progress about a...
Connext, Flanders Image’s annual film and TV showcase, taking place from October 9-10 in Antwerp, is fast growing its reputation on the international stage.
Paolo Bertolin, a member of the selection committee of the Venice Film Festival, visited the Antwerp-based showcase for the first time in 2022 with a simple ambition to meet Belgian talent and discover the best up -and- coming projects from the region.
Among the projects he saw was Fien Troch’s Holly, a then work-in-progress about a...
- 10/8/2023
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
The debut feature from The Broken Circle Breakdown star Veerle Baetens is an uncompromising adaptation of Lize Spitz’s novel Het Smelt (It Melts), which tells the story of a woman confronting the trauma of her past. The story unfolds over two time periods as the adult Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne) prepares to travel back to the small town where she grew up. Action in the present is interwoven with what happened to her one fateful summer as a child.
We caught up with the Belgian director over Zoom to chat about the film. The very spoiler-averse may want to wait until after they have seen the film before reading the second half.
Reading the press notes, it seems...
We caught up with the Belgian director over Zoom to chat about the film. The very spoiler-averse may want to wait until after they have seen the film before reading the second half.
Reading the press notes, it seems...
- 2/10/2023
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Without spoiling anything, there’s a particularly horrifying and disturbing scene that happens near the end of the film When It Melts involving the younger version of the main character, and the way that scene plays out left me incredibly uncomfortable and disturbed and will forever haunt me.
The use of a hand-held cam and the performances from all the child actors in that scene really enhanced this terrifying moment and was probably the most scared I’ve ever been in a film that is not technically labeled as horror. However, it is because of this one scene that I feel frustrated about When It Melts because as powerful as that scene was, the rest of the film does not even closely match that level of quality.
When It Melts is the directorial debut of Belgian actress Veerle Baetens and follows the story of Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne), a lonely...
The use of a hand-held cam and the performances from all the child actors in that scene really enhanced this terrifying moment and was probably the most scared I’ve ever been in a film that is not technically labeled as horror. However, it is because of this one scene that I feel frustrated about When It Melts because as powerful as that scene was, the rest of the film does not even closely match that level of quality.
When It Melts is the directorial debut of Belgian actress Veerle Baetens and follows the story of Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne), a lonely...
- 2/6/2023
- by Timothy Lee
- Uinterview
A couple of times over in “When It Melts,” the directorial debut of Belgian actor Veerle Baetens, Eva, played as a morose, withdrawn adult by Charlotte De Bruyne, looks at a photograph of herself as a 13-year-old. In the picture, child Eva (Sundance prizewinner Rosa Marchant) is grinning a lopsided, optimistic tomboy grin, unaware of the violent end of innocence lying in wait for her. The space between these two Evas — a vast gulf not just temporal but scarringly psychological — is territory painstakingly mapped out by Baetens, whose grip on the tone of gathering dread is sure, until it becomes suffocating. As the story pivots back and forth between its two timelines, as though hoping one will hold the key to the other’s release, it grows oppressive, as hard to witness as a cornered bird battering itself helplessly against one window, then the next.
Eva is a shy photographer’s assistant,...
Eva is a shy photographer’s assistant,...
- 2/3/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Film will world premiere in Berlin’s Encounters selection.
Paris-based sales company The Party has acquired world rights for Paul B. Preciado’s Orlando, My Political Biography ahead of its world premiere in Berlin’s Encounters selection, and has unveiled the first trailer (watch above).
Writer, philosopher and curator Preciado’s film blurs the lines between reality and fiction with a personal interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography a century after its publication. The director concludes that the book’s character has become real, and that the world is becoming increasingly Orlando-esque. He held a viral street...
Paris-based sales company The Party has acquired world rights for Paul B. Preciado’s Orlando, My Political Biography ahead of its world premiere in Berlin’s Encounters selection, and has unveiled the first trailer (watch above).
Writer, philosopher and curator Preciado’s film blurs the lines between reality and fiction with a personal interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography a century after its publication. The director concludes that the book’s character has become real, and that the world is becoming increasingly Orlando-esque. He held a viral street...
- 2/2/2023
- by Rebecca Leffler
- ScreenDaily
The 2023 Sundance Film Festival, the festival’s first in-person competition since 2020, has revealed its award winners.
The big winners included Maryam Keshavarz‘s The Persian Version, which earned both the Audience Award and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, and A.V. Rockwell‘s A Thousand and One, which took home the Grand Jury Prize in the same category.
The Persian Version explores an Iranian-American family’s past as its patriarch gets a heart transplant while A Thousand and One centers around a mother who kidnaps her son from the foster care system in order to find a path toward redemption.
Other winners include Festival Favorite Radical directed by Christopher Zalla and Grand Jury Prize winner for U.S. Documentary, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.
The festival has highlighted 101 different features and 64 shorts. These films were selected from a total of 15,856 submissions. Most of...
The big winners included Maryam Keshavarz‘s The Persian Version, which earned both the Audience Award and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, and A.V. Rockwell‘s A Thousand and One, which took home the Grand Jury Prize in the same category.
The Persian Version explores an Iranian-American family’s past as its patriarch gets a heart transplant while A Thousand and One centers around a mother who kidnaps her son from the foster care system in order to find a path toward redemption.
Other winners include Festival Favorite Radical directed by Christopher Zalla and Grand Jury Prize winner for U.S. Documentary, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.
The festival has highlighted 101 different features and 64 shorts. These films were selected from a total of 15,856 submissions. Most of...
- 1/28/2023
- by Alex Nguyen
- Uinterview
A Thousand and One took the jury prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, with Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project taking the top prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition section.
A Thousand and One is directed by A.V. Rockwell and follows a mother who kidnaps her six-year-old son Terry from the foster care system, a secret that threatens their way of life as Terry gets older. The Focus Features title stars Teyana Taylor, Josiah Cross and Will Catlett.
“When I was writing this film, I was thinking about mother and son relationships. I was thinking about Black women and Black men relationships. I was thinking about marginalized people and their relationship to their homes,” said Rockwell, accepting the award. “Thank you to everyone for seeing all of those groups and for seeing me.” A tearful Jeremy O. Harris, who was a part of the dramatic jury,...
A Thousand and One is directed by A.V. Rockwell and follows a mother who kidnaps her six-year-old son Terry from the foster care system, a secret that threatens their way of life as Terry gets older. The Focus Features title stars Teyana Taylor, Josiah Cross and Will Catlett.
“When I was writing this film, I was thinking about mother and son relationships. I was thinking about Black women and Black men relationships. I was thinking about marginalized people and their relationship to their homes,” said Rockwell, accepting the award. “Thank you to everyone for seeing all of those groups and for seeing me.” A tearful Jeremy O. Harris, who was a part of the dramatic jury,...
- 1/27/2023
- by Mia Galuppo
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Back in Park City, Utah, for the first time since 2020, the Sundance Film Festival concluded with an in-person awards show. The U.S. dramatic grand jury prize went to the Focus Features release “A Thousand and One,” from debut writer-director A.V. Rockwell, one of eight women in this year’s female-led competition.
Jeremy O. Harris, a member of the three-person U.S. dramatic jury at Sundance, choked back tears as he presented the award to Rockwell, admitting that he left the director’s premiere screening and cried on the street, as the film unearthed “all the feelings I’ve learned to mask in public spaces.”
Rockwell’s film is set in an unforgiving New York City in the late ’90s, where a single mother moving from shelter to shelter kidnaps her 6-year-old son from foster care. As they improbably forge a life and bond, their darkest secret threatens to disrupt what they’ve built.
Jeremy O. Harris, a member of the three-person U.S. dramatic jury at Sundance, choked back tears as he presented the award to Rockwell, admitting that he left the director’s premiere screening and cried on the street, as the film unearthed “all the feelings I’ve learned to mask in public spaces.”
Rockwell’s film is set in an unforgiving New York City in the late ’90s, where a single mother moving from shelter to shelter kidnaps her 6-year-old son from foster care. As they improbably forge a life and bond, their darkest secret threatens to disrupt what they’ve built.
- 1/27/2023
- by Matt Donnelly and Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
As the first in-person Sundance Film Festival since 2020 draws to a close, it’s time to see which films are taking home the festival’s most coveted awards. While there are many ways to measure success at Sundance — and many filmmakers are certainly more interested in a big sale than a trophy — the awards are nevertheless an important way of measuring which films resonated with the Park City crowd.
Friday’s award ceremony is the culmination of what has already been a very eventful festival. Despite the multitude of changes that the independent film world and the streaming industry are currently undergoing, this year’s festival still featured its share of buzzy premieres and splashy acquisitions. One of the most talked about movies in Park City has been Chloe Domont’s erotic thriller “Fair Play,” which sold to Netflix for a reported price of 20 million. The festival also featured some...
Friday’s award ceremony is the culmination of what has already been a very eventful festival. Despite the multitude of changes that the independent film world and the streaming industry are currently undergoing, this year’s festival still featured its share of buzzy premieres and splashy acquisitions. One of the most talked about movies in Park City has been Chloe Domont’s erotic thriller “Fair Play,” which sold to Netflix for a reported price of 20 million. The festival also featured some...
- 1/27/2023
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
Best known for playing a bluegrass-singing mother with an ill daughter in the Oscar-nominated “The Broken Circle Breakdown” and a relentless cop on the television show “Code 37,” actress Veerle Baetens donned a director’s cap for her feature debut “When it Melts.”
Based on Lize Spit’s novel “The Melting,” the film premiered in this year’s Sundance World Feature Competition. The actress-turned director and Rosa Marchant — who plays the film’s protagonist in her childhood years — joined Sharon Waxman to discuss the picture’s unflinching, uncompromising look at the lingering impact of childhood trauma with TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The Music Lodge.
Explaining the film’s cryptic title, Baetens argued it’s about how the protagonist isolates herself after a childhood incident, and how such trauma makes her a frozen person. “It’s a beautiful metaphor for people who have experienced trauma to be in a frozen state of mind,...
Based on Lize Spit’s novel “The Melting,” the film premiered in this year’s Sundance World Feature Competition. The actress-turned director and Rosa Marchant — who plays the film’s protagonist in her childhood years — joined Sharon Waxman to discuss the picture’s unflinching, uncompromising look at the lingering impact of childhood trauma with TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The Music Lodge.
Explaining the film’s cryptic title, Baetens argued it’s about how the protagonist isolates herself after a childhood incident, and how such trauma makes her a frozen person. “It’s a beautiful metaphor for people who have experienced trauma to be in a frozen state of mind,...
- 1/23/2023
- by Scott Mendelson
- The Wrap
It’s a backhanded compliment to Sundance to see such an emotionally stunning film as Belgian director Veerle Baetens’ When It Melts, which premiered tonight in the festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and wonder, right away, why a film of this power won’t be debuting in the official selection at Cannes this year. This is in no way to suggest that the American indie showcase is a kind of second-best place for it, more an indictment of Europe’s biggest cinema event, which routinely takes such harrowing stories of tortured and troubled women — as long as they are directed by men.
Ironically, at least two of those men (notably Michael Haneke and Lars Von Trier) are recognisable for their influence here, in an intense and uncompromising debut that sets a very high bar for this year’s international arthouse sector. In terms of investigating the cruelty of youth,...
Ironically, at least two of those men (notably Michael Haneke and Lars Von Trier) are recognisable for their influence here, in an intense and uncompromising debut that sets a very high bar for this year’s international arthouse sector. In terms of investigating the cruelty of youth,...
- 1/22/2023
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
When It Melts
Belgian actress Veerle Baetens (best known for The Broken Circle Breakdown and Mothers’ Instinct) moved behind the camera for her directorial debut on a project that was getting terrific buzz (plus Prix Arte Kino Intl. coin) before it even went into production. A book-to-film adaptation based on Lize Spit’s Het Smelt — When It Melts is a film that highlights loneliness, burying the pain and as Baetens illustrates … it is the quiet people who have the loudest minds. Rosa Marchant and Charlotte De Bruyne share the same character and….the same traumas. Savage Films’ Bart Van Langendonck (Racer and the Jailbird) is producing.…...
Belgian actress Veerle Baetens (best known for The Broken Circle Breakdown and Mothers’ Instinct) moved behind the camera for her directorial debut on a project that was getting terrific buzz (plus Prix Arte Kino Intl. coin) before it even went into production. A book-to-film adaptation based on Lize Spit’s Het Smelt — When It Melts is a film that highlights loneliness, burying the pain and as Baetens illustrates … it is the quiet people who have the loudest minds. Rosa Marchant and Charlotte De Bruyne share the same character and….the same traumas. Savage Films’ Bart Van Langendonck (Racer and the Jailbird) is producing.…...
- 1/12/2023
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
The project is being showcased in the Work in Progress section of Re>Connext.
The Party Film Sales has acquired world sales rights to Belgian actor Veerle Baetens’ feature directorial debut When It Melts, which has just completed the first part of shooting.
The project is being showcased in the Work in Progress section of Re>Connext, the virtual edition of the annual Connext event showcasing films and TV series made in Flanders and Brussels.
Baetens is best-known internationally for her award-winning performances in features including The Broken Circle Breakdown and Mother’s Instinct and has recently broken into high-end...
The Party Film Sales has acquired world sales rights to Belgian actor Veerle Baetens’ feature directorial debut When It Melts, which has just completed the first part of shooting.
The project is being showcased in the Work in Progress section of Re>Connext, the virtual edition of the annual Connext event showcasing films and TV series made in Flanders and Brussels.
Baetens is best-known internationally for her award-winning performances in features including The Broken Circle Breakdown and Mother’s Instinct and has recently broken into high-end...
- 10/11/2021
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
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