Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat by Johan Grimonprez
The Flemish CONNEXT showcase, running 10-25 October, offers up 26 new and upcoming Flemish and Brussels-initiated documentary features and works-in-progress (both feature projects and series, including VR) which will be presented to the international sales, distribution, finance and festival professionals in attendance both in Antwerp and online.
The in-person showcase runs 10-11 October for two days, while all projects will be accessible by the online professional audience throughout the 15 days of the event.
“The main objective is to get both content and talent on the radar of international professionals at a much earlier stage,” say organisers. “CONNEXT also offers the opportunity for the makers to talk directly, get instant feedback and network with the international guests, and confron them with the rapidly changing market reality.”
In 2022 the three main broadcasters in Flanders; DPG Media (VTM and VTM GO), SBS Belgium and VRT (1, Canvas and VRT Max), as well as SVOD player Streamz, will each be given the opportunity to present scenes from, and/or promo-reels featuring, their upcoming productions.
Back in February, Kind Hearts by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes, a project first presented at CONNEXT, won the Grand Prix at Berlinale after it was selected for Generation 14plus competition. (See Business Doc Europe review). Other projects first pitched at CONNEXT include Peter Triest’s A Parked Life, which won the European Stories Award at Fipadoc in January 2022 and the First Special Prize at TNT Documentary Days in June, and is currently screening in 22 Dutch cities before its Belgian release in December 2022 (Sales: CAT&Docs)
Otilia Babara’s Love Is Not An Orange, produced by Clin d’oeil Films and which features at CONNEXT 2022, will world premiere at the upcoming DOK Leipzig. Meanwhile, sales on Lennart Stuyck and Maarten Stuyck’s 3 x 50’ doc series Catching the Pirate King (prod: Diplodokus), also screening at this year’s CONNEXT, have been picked up by Federation Entertainment (France).
Other recent doc successes include the Hot Docs 2021 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.
Project pitch
Writer/director Thom Vander Beken will have a busy time at CONNEXT 2022 with both a new project pitch for The Last Jewish Summer (prod. Quetzalcoatl), which tackles head-on Antwerp’s complicity in the persecution of its Jewish population during WWII, and a screening of his VR The Interview (prod: Minds Meet). In Vander Beken’s interactive work, the participant interviews Afghan asylum-seekers and must decide for yourself, on the spot, who can stay and who must be sent back. How easy is it to make that decision when the person is sitting in front of you, in the same room?
Documentary feature works-in progress
Thirteen Flemish feature doc works-in progress will be presented to the great and the good of the (co)production, funding, sales, distribution and festival sectors in attendance, both in Antwerp and online.
Bye Mom! is written and directed by Marie De Hert & Ellen Pollard (prod. Borgerhoff & Lamberigts Tv) and concerns the bond between 102-year-old Rennie and her daughter Yvette. Their relationship is put to the test when Rennie’s health starts to deteriorate.
In CORPUS a Quest for Eternity, directed by Jelle Janssens & Sofie Hanegreefs and produced by Sophimages, five contemporary artists take us on a journey into the world of medical art, to reflect upon the beauty of the mortal body. Meanwhile, another Sophimages project, Engel’s Dream, written and directed by Peter Woditsch, tells the remarkable post-war life story of the eponymous protagonist who dreams of creating a museum of erotic art in the building where he used to run one of the most notorious brothels in Germany.
Writer/director Pascal Garnier’s A Hiphop Minute (prod. Animal Tank) revisits New York in 1986 and its iconic rap artists to see how things have changed over the past 35 years, and asks if rap still has a future? In The Jacket, written and directed by Mathijs Poppe (prod. Mirage), after a theatrical prop goes missing, the Palestinian instigator of the theatre show starts a nightly journey through the streets of Beirut only to be confronted with a city in crisis.
Manu Riche’s Carbon (prod. Menuetto, RE>CONNEXT pitch in 2021) seeks to show how Europe has been systematically torn apart by wars caused by the same fossil fuels on which the continent built its wealth over the past 100 years. Also produced by Menuetto is Jan Hoet – The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, written and directed by Luc Vrydaghs, about the legendary art curator Jan Hoet, who died almost a decade ago.
Clin d’oeil Films presents two works-in-progress. These are Marching in the Dark, written and directed by Kinshuk Surjan, about the emancipation of young Indian women in a rural area threatened by climate change and farmer suicides, and Pieter Van Eecke’s Planet B which documents how two teenage girls join the fight against climate change and wonder how they will live in a world with an uncertain future.
Life Will Give You Pictures, written by Bart Maes & Aldine Reinink, directed by Aldine Reinink (prod. Zonderling) and pitched as a new project at RE>CONNEXT in 2021, concerns the majestic but dilapidated house that holds the gigantic, chaotic archive of three generations of photographers, most notably the 83-year-old Herman Selleslags. Slave Island is written by Jimmy Hendrickx & Jeremy Kewuan and produced by Kristian Van der Heyden of Harald House. The doc deals with the delicate topic of slave trading between families, according to the principles of Sumbanese culture and the Marapu religion.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, also presented as a new project at RE>CONNEXT in 2021, is written and directed by Johan Grimonprez (prod. Zap-O-Matik). The doc concerns the post-colonial struggle for Congo’s resources, told from the unique perspective of Andrée Blouin, a neglected pioneer of female emancipation and independence throughout Africa. Under the Surface is written and directed by Guido Verelst and produced by Storyhouse. In the film, Anne has Asperger’s syndrome and wants nothing more than to live underwater as a mermaid. But she has to learn how to live on the surface.
Documentary feature screenings
Duty of Care – The Climate Trials (prod. Wisteria, sales Java Films), written and directed by Nic Balthazar, was selected for the Movies That Matter Justitia Competition in 2022. The film follows Dutch lawyer Roger Cox as he attempts to make global legal history by establishing that governments and Big Oil have a duty of care to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Meanwhile, For What It’s Worth, directed by Ben De Raes (prod. Dagvorm Films), provides a meditation on the alternative meanings of value via three stories about gold, from a working mine in the Philippines, a proposed mine in a Greek forest, and a laboratory in Belgium.
The Diplodokus project Heimaland, written and directed by Dorus Masure & Ischa Clissen, comprises a documentary portrait of an Icelandic village that has become a tourist attraction due to the activity of a near-by volcano, but which also risks annihilation during its next big eruption.
In Holding Up the Sky, written and directed by Pieter Van Eecke (also the director of the work-in-progress Planet B), when Brazilian president Bolsonaro announces that industries can locate in the Amazon Yanomami territory, Davi Kopenawa and his son Dario expand their battle to an international level to defend their land against the invaders.
Van Eecke’s doc is the first of three Clin d’oeil Films works that screen during CONNEXT 2022. The others are Love is Not An Orange, written and directed by Otilia Babara (prod. Clin d’oeil Films), which world-premieres at DOK Leipzig later in October, and My Paper Life, written and directed by Vida Dena (sales: Cat & Docs), which was presented as a project in 2021 and subsequently selected at a raft of leading European doc fests including Visions du Réel and Sheffield.
Two projects produced by Associate Directors are The Pasha, My Mother and I written and directed by Nevine Gerits, in which the director retraces her family’s past in order to come to terms with her mother’s wish that she carry on her Kurdish legacy, and Seed, written and directed by Dries Meddens, which tells the story of a man’s obsession with the genetic origins of his father’s bipolarism. In his quest for answers, he does not realise that the most powerful treatment – love – is already within his reach.
Documentary series works-in-progress
DNA, written by Maarten Stuyck and directed by Lennart Stuyck & Maarten Stuyck (prod. Diplodokus), constitutes an investigation into the enormous opportunities and pitfalls offered by our ever-expanding knowledge of DNA. In Draw for Change! directed by Nada Riyadh, Anna Moiseenko, Sama Pana, Karen Vázquez Guadarrama, Kim Longinotto and Laura Nix, and produced by Clin d’oeil Films, female cartoonists and their drawings offer a glimpse into some of the most pressing issues women face today.
Documentary series screening
Lennart Stuyck & Maarten Stuyck will also screen their Catching the Pirate King (prod. Diplodokus), a 3 x 50-minute documentary series on the hijacking by Somalian pirates of the Belgian ship, the Pompei, in the spring of 2009.
