Steven Dhoedt’s Sunrise Kids
Commencing October 4 and running through October 15, the Flemish showcase RE>CONNEXT this year offers up 26 feature and four doc series titles to the online industry, who are granted round the clock access to new project pitches, presentations of works in progress, and screenings. Business Doc Europe previews the documentary and non-fiction fare on offer.
RE>CONNEXT 2021 kicks off towards the end of a year when Flemish documentaries performed well on the international stage, as evidenced by Olga Lucovnicova’s Berlinale Golden Bear (Best Short Subject) for My Uncle Tudor, and the short-list selection of Volkan Üce’s All-In for the European Film Awards, following its world-premiere at CPH:DOX.
Other notable results include the Hot Docs International Emerging Filmmaker Award given to Annabel Verbeke for her 4 Seasons in a Day, part of Off World’s Borderline series of documentaries about European borders (see below). Also noteworthy was the Special Mention given to Liesbeth De Ceulaer’s Holgut after its world-premiere at CPH:DOX, plus its subsequent award of Best Belgian Film at Docville Next Wave. All-In, 4 Seasons in a Day and Holgut will all screen during RE>CONNEXT.
The 2021 Flemish showcase comprises documentary new projects, works-in-progress and screening, presented by established and emerging docmakers alike.
Johan Grimonprez (Shadow World, 2016) will present his new project Soundtrack to a coup d’etat, a Cold War documentary that fuses the promise of African decolonization in the 1960s, the rise of the US civil rights movement and the State Department’s mobilization of ‘jazz ambassadors’ for propaganda purposes.
Koen Mortier, director of the highly lauded fiction films Ex-Drummer and Angel presents his Netflix work-in-progress series Voices of Liberation, an 11-part documentary series about the international commemoration route that connects important locations of the Second World War, as told via the personal documents of those involved, and the stories of local residents. The first episode features Thomas Brodie-Sangster [The Queen’s Gambit, Game Of Thrones].
Steven Dhoedt (Reach for the Sky, Busan 2016) will have a busy RE>CONNEXT as he presents his new feature doc project Sunrise Kids, about Japanese delinquency throughout the ages, and his work-in-progress documentary series The Sound of Seoul, about the unique sounds of post-war South Korea and his consequent search for the nation’s musical legacy. These two projects are produced by Brussels-based Visualantics, the company also responsible for Brecht Debackere’s Nostalgia for the Future, an ambitious essay on the ground-breaking (and reclusive) filmmaker and artist Chris Marker.
Ruben Desiere (The Flower Shop, IFFR 2018) is back with the work-in-progress Echo, in which young army recruits are taught observation skills, and in the process begin the evolution towards the soldiers they must become. Olivia Rochette & Gerard-Jan Claes will present their feature doc work-in-progress Kind Hearts, described as a candid portrait of the formative, uncertain aspects of every (first) love.
In terms of new talent, newcomer Guillaume Graux will pitch his highly relevant and evocative doc series project Mobutu, about the Congolese dictator as seen through the prism of the Black Lives Matter movement. The project is produced by Belgian production company Panenka.
Olga Lucovnicova has of course proven herself to be the real deal after her Berlinale 2021 success for My Uncle Tudor, but she will nevertheless will pitch her feature doc debut project Letters From My Grandma at RE>CONNEXT, once again telling a painfully intimate story from her own family history.
Equally personal is Rachida El Garani’s completed longform debut In My Father’s House, which will be pitched during the Flemish showcase. Her short film Into Darkness was selected for IDFA 2015.
Highly anticipated documentary and non-fiction projects nearing completion include three more films in the Off World Borderline 6-part series, produced by Frederik Nicolai, which investigate the concept of the ‘border’ in and around the European Union by following people who interact with these borders on a daily basis.
These are Before They Meet by Vytautas Puidokas, in which ornithological stations either side of the border between Lithuania and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad independently study bird migration across the region; Isabella Rinaldi’s Liberland which questions the motives of the self-proclaimed president of a freedom-loving micro-nation in the middle of the Danube, between Serbia and Croatia; and Georg Götmark & John Erling Utsi’s Radji which depicts the seemingly never-ending border conflict between the indigenous Sámi people and the Norwegian and Swedish authorities.
The three completed Borderline films which will be screened during RE>CONNEXT are Annabel Verbeke’s 4 Seasons in a Day (Hot Docs International Emerging Filmmaker Award); The Wire, which premièred at Dokfest Munich and won the Zagreb.Dox FIPRESCI Award, and Where the Worlds End, which premiered at Astra Film Festival.
Another project nearing completion is the reflective feature doc Why We Fight by director Mirjam Devriendt & leading choreographer Alain Patel, in which the makers try to understand the violence around us, but also within ourselves, in order to better cope with the world today. The project is produced by Cassette For Timescapes.
Also screening for the international doc community is the feature Prism by An van. Dienderen, Eléonore Yameogo and Rosine Mbakam, described as a co-creative film in the form of a chain letter, made by three filmmakers with different skin tones and which questions the neutrality of the camera and its ability to tackle other inequalities in society that are based on skin colour. The film recently premièred at the New York Film Festival 2021 and will receive a limited release in the US this autumn.
One company that will be particularly busy at RE>CONNEXT 2021 is the Leuven-based Diplodokus whose projects include Louisiana Mees’ And Tomorrow, the Whole World, about four young refugees preparing to leave their temporary home once they turn 18, and further described as a coming-of-age film about migration, which touches issues of social inclusion, growing up and loneliness.
Also on the Diplodokus slate is Lennart Stuyck’s 3 x 50’ work-in-progress Capturing the Pirate King which tells the unlikely tale of how two high-ranking Somali pirates were captured by the Belgian police after a hijacking in the Gulf of Aden. Meanwhile, guests of RE>CONNEXT can see Philippe Niclaes’ charming, heart-warming and very personal As Long As We Can, about ageing and the demise of the local corner shop.
