Fantastic Wallonia

Release date: 2023

Selma, 15, is growing up between her separated parents, Michal and Élise. When devastating acid rain hits France after ravaging much of the world, this divided family will need to come together. His only objective now is to escape an unprecedented climate catastrophe.

Just Philippot has made a name for herself with four short films, including the César-nominated Ses souffles and Acide. His first feature, La Nuée, confirms his passion for genre cinema, winning two awards at Gérardmer and being nominated for a César for Best First Film. Its low budget doesn’t prevent thrill-seekers from embracing it, nor Netflix from buying it. It’s enough to give his career a solid boost. For Acide, he reunites Guillaume Canet and Laetitia Dosch in a restless thriller that grows in scope as it develops. Under the guise of a fantastic drama, it tackles one of the major problems of our time – climate collapse – in a quasi-metaphorical but terribly effective way. Acide had its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in the Midnight Screenings section, and its theatrical release captured the attention of 238,000 viewers in September 2023.

Release date: 2023

In a near-future where artificial intelligence is taking over from nature, New York couple Rachel and Alvy decide to have a baby. A tech giant, extolling the virtues of simpler, more equal motherhood, is proposing that would-be parents carry their child in a POD, a kind of technological egg that can be taken anywhere, but also left in an alcove when working. Alvy has her doubts, but Rachel, an up-and-coming businesswoman, urges her to give it a try…

A Franco-American director (Sophie Barthes), Anglo-Saxon actors (Emilia Clarke, Chiwetel Ejiofor), a majority production (Scope Pictures) and a Belgian shoot: The Pod Generation has all the makings of a curiosity, unique in the cinematic landscape. And it’s not its polished, Hollywood-esque aesthetics that are likely to distract us from this fascinating plunge into a future so slightly dystopian that it’s easy to identify with the main characters facing a series of very contemporary moral dilemmas. The cynical appearances of Jean-Marc Barr as a techno guru, half-Jeff Bezos, half-Steve Jobs, further reinforce the unease of being caught up in a not-so-alternative reality… and provoke in the viewer an irresistible desire to escape and disconnect.

Release date: 2022

Explosions resound in the hall of a Brussels high school, students panic, run and collapse under the gunfire of two heavily armed young suicide bombers. Isabelle and Adamo, two nurses who have just taken up their duties, try to provide first aid. Pressed for time, they take a wounded teenager into their ambulance, unaware that he is one of the terrorists wearing an explosive belt.

From the very long opening sequence, punctuated by a gut-wrenching massacre, we know that the journey won’t be easy. The tension aboard the ambulance is amplified by the mobile camera of Benoit Dervaux (cinematographer on the latest films by the Dardenne brothers), constantly close to the action. Transcending his budget, director Alessandro Tonda sticks to his minimal pitch to focus on the three characters riding together to certain death, and the police officers trying to stop the vehicle’s advance. Here’s a fun fact: even though it’s supposed to take place in Brussels, this Italian thriller was actually shot in Liège, where the local authorities gave all the necessary accreditation despite the touchy subject matter. Wallonia, a welcoming land…

Black Swan Tales is a collection of genre films inspired by the method used by the Blumhouse production company in the USA. It was launched by French producer Noor Sadar and Belgian production company Entre Chien et Loup. In Belgium, it will now be handled by François Touwaide and his new company: Sequel prod.
The principle? Produce several horror films, one after the other, in French and in English, with different artists, but arranged according to an identical industrial scheme, thus rationalizing expenses. A Mediawan company, Black Swan Tales, has been specifically created in partnership with sales company WTFilms to maximize the potential of this initiative.

The first four films in the pipeline are Deep Fear, written by Niko Tackian and directed by Grégory Beghin; No Filter, written and directed by Michael Dupret; The Night Man, a psychological thriller written by Elsa Marpeau and directed by Mélanie Delloye; and The Hunt by writer-director Jérôme Genevray. All these films were co-financed by Wallimage on the basis of a Walloon post-production scheme, repeated from work to work.

Deep fear (Black Swan Tales 1)

Release date: 2021

Three freshly graduated students are wondering how to celebrate the event in style. We’re in Paris in the 90s. In a bar, a friend of a friend suggests a descent into the catacombs. Excited, they begin their exploration in good spirits. They are far from suspecting that their expedition will turn into a nightmare. Sonia and her two sidekicks, Max and Henry, soon have only one goal: to escape a strange creature hiding in the bowels of the Earth and reach the surface.

Supposedly set in the Catacombs of Paris, Deep Fear is even less of a documentary in that it was filmed almost entirely in Wallonia. Yet these underground galleries are not used as a banal horrific backdrop. They even act as a symbolic revelation. For the horror in Deep Fear metaphorizes the buried threat posed by the resurgence of the far right and racist, ultra-nationalist ideologies. A specter that haunts history (reflected in the catacombs), but also the present, appearing in the protagonists’ daily lives in various forms.

No Filter (Black Swan Tales2)

Release date: 2022

As her high school’s number one social influencer, Anna is still discovering the pros and cons of this new status. Alone at home, she’s determined to gain as many followers as possible, but when the line between real and virtual becomes blurred, everything can quickly fall apart.

Written and directed by Michael Dupret, based on his short film of the same name, No Filter was developed as part of the Sundance residency program. While the last half-hour turns into a real thriller, the rest of the film oscillates between the bizarre and a sociological reflection on the consequences of the frantic pursuit of supposed fame, at the risk of losing all one’s bearings, one’s friends… and oneself.

Nightman (Black Swan Tales 3)

Release date: 2023

Alex (Eoin Duffy) and her husband Damian (Mark Huberman) decide to move into his childhood home, a magnificent Irish manor house at the foot of an impressive hill. When the police arrive at their home to investigate the disappearance of a woman in a neighboring town, the couple realize that something is amiss.

Supposedly set in the Irish countryside, The Nightman was filmed almost entirely in Wallonia by Mélanie Delloye, whose second feature follows L’Indivision. Relying on the codes of fantasy and a universe bordering on gothic terror, Nightman is above all an intimate, tense and breathless drama that highlights the phenomenon of gaslighting. This mental manipulation consists in making the victim doubt what she has seen, heard or believed, or even what she thinks, by relying on lies, or on a supposed weakness that she cannot control. The film also questions the way in which our societies treat children who don’t quite fit into the norm, even if it means applying inhuman treatment to them that will not remain without consequences.

Release date: 2022

When her daughter disappears without a trace into the cellar of the impressive building she’s just moved into, Keira has only one obsession: to find her and understand the mystery of this house, which seems to harbor an ancient and powerful entity. Overcoming her anxieties and the indifference of her workaholic husband, she’ll have to fight if she doesn’t want to risk losing the souls of her family members forever.

Rather unrecognizable with her dark hair, the heroine is intriguing. Where has it been seen before? Of course! Of course… Elisha Cuthbert, then as blonde as wheat, played Jack Bauer’s daughter for ten seasons in the series 24 (chrono hours). Now in her forties, and resplendent, she’s back in genre films, having shone in 2005’s effective The House of Wax. Time flies… The originality of The Cellar, which could pass for a banal haunted house movie, is that its enigma is based on a mathematical mystery of convoluted equations. Fortunately, Elisha isn’t just a well-shaped head, she’s also a full one. Even if this may not be enough to escape his fate.

Release date: 2018

In the near future, where overpopulation and famine have forced governments to adopt drastic measures on the one-child policy, 7 septuplet sisters live in hiding. In turn, according to the days of the week, the sisters assume the identity of one person: Karen Settman. Until the day Monday disappears…

The assets of this dystopian thriller are multiple: unpredictable scenario, exceptional performance of Noomi Rapace who plays seven characters, supported by stars such as Glen Close or Willem Dafoe, important Walloon involvement, in particular for the special effects studio Benuts who had fun working on the modification of the sets.

In the end, Tommy Wirkola’s film is a real success, fun and unbridled, which had an unexpected and overwhelming success in France with 1,863,356 admissions.

Release date: 2018

In the family of great genre directors, we ask the Spaniard Jaume Balaguero. The nameless sect, Darkness, Rec 1, 2 and 4, Fragile, Malevolence… So many titles that make aficionados shiver. If the Catalan filmmaker plans to come and shoot part of his new feature film in Wallonia, the excitement is guaranteed.

Behind this opportunity lies the first collaboration between Jean-Yves Roubin(Frakas) and the lively Irish producer Brendan McCarthy(Fantastic Films), a complicity that will quickly lead to two other very promising films Sea Fever and Vivarium. At the heart of this co-production, some Walloon technicians, special effects signed Mikros Liège and, as a cherry on the cake, a VR companion largely financed by Wallimage, directed by Jaume Balaguero with the technology of Mikros Liège.

Released in Spain in a hurry, Muse did not have the overwhelming success of its author’s previous films. It is however a dive, a little classic certainly, but devilishly effective in a dark and dangerous universe where some Muses reign without pity. An inspiring film.

Release date: 2014

Historically, Welp is not the first Belgian slasher. In 1982, Guy Lee Thijs inaugurated his cinematographic career with a Giallo-filled Murder in the Pencil that oscillated between homage and nanars. But Welp, shot in 2013 and produced by Potemkino with AT Production, is clearly of a different stamp: the young Jonas Govaerts knows his classics and when he evokes his idols it is through clever winks that create a real connivance with his audience.

It is in the Walloon forest that he plunges a troop of Antwerp cubs taken to task by a gang of local hooligans. Bad idea, because this small wood is the stronghold of the skinner, a very sadistic bloodthirsty madman and of the wolf child who serves him to bring down the victims that he is going to martyr.

Nice casting (Jan Hammenecker as a serial killer, Titus de Voogdt, Evelien Bosman just before Marina…), photo signed by the maestro Nicolas Karakatsanis, Welp hits the nail on the head and remains in the memory.

A handful of Walloon technicians and Dame Blanche Genval, in charge of the sound post-prod, supported Jonas Govaerts who proved a few years later with the formidable Tabula Rasa series that he would be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come. A star is born !

Release date: 2018

When Jean-Jacques Neira(Fontana) is contacted by Netflix to set up the production of a film reserved for the VOD platform, everyone holds their breath: the big shake-up is coming to Belgium as well. Because yes, already in 2016, Netflix is a myth, the great invisible sea serpent that will devour or on the contrary revitalize the entire film industry. Choose your side!

At Wallimage, the surprise is quickly swept away by the enthusiasm. With a French artistic team, a Walloon line producer (Nicolas George) who composes a team essentially from Liège, the shooting takes place without a hitch. And if the budget is not exceptional for a work of this ambition, the inventiveness of the troops makes it possible to complete the film within the allotted time.

Mikros Liège (VFX) and Dame Blanche (sound) will bring the final touch to the edifice that makes Wallimage the first regional fund to invest in a Netflix project, an experience renewed since with Julien Leclercq’s La terre et le sang.

Release date: 2019

Films are like music. Some are designed to please the widest possible audience, others try to surprise at all costs, to shake up, to disturb by blurring the borders, the tracks and the habits. Dreamland is of this kind.

A jazz virtuoso turned heroin addict, a vaguely humanistic hitman, a grotesque gang leader who wants to get revenge on the musician who disrespected him by having his finger cut off, vampires, a wedding, theatrics, Bruce McDonald (Pontyfool) does not shy away from anything to surprise the one who ventures in front of the screen.

To flesh out this unlikely story, he didn’t skimp on the casting either: a double dose of Stephen McHattie opposite crazy rockers Juliette Lewis and Henry Rollins. It is strong, powerful, stainless. Scheduled for its world premiere at the Brussels BIFFF in 2019, Dreamland proved that immersing film noir in a psychedelic atmosphere and pushing all the sliders to the max resulted in a work that defies benchmarks and explodes habits. Just for that…

Release date: 2019

The fate of genre films is not easy to imagine when you read a script. Who could have foreseen that Mandy and The Hole in the Ground would be selected at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival and especially that Panos Cosmatos’ psychedelic delirium would then find itself at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes? Even if it is not traditionally a very hospitable land for the genre, the Mediterranean Festival remains a goal for any filmmaker with a little ambition.

So imagine the smile that must have painted itself on Lorcan Finnegan’s face when he learned that his second feature would be scheduled for Critics’ Week on the Croisette in 2019. Co-produced like Sea Fever and Muse by Fantastic Film in Ireland and Frakas in Belgium, Vivarium reunites Imogen Poots(Green Room) and Jesse Eisenberg(The Social Network, Justice League…). The young couple will find themselves stuck in a residential area from which it is impossible to leave. Trapped in this new look Hotel California, their life will fall into a surreal hell.

Shot in part in an empty warehouse transformed into a studio in the Liège region, Vivarium is also very Walloon in nature with some of its special effects by Benuts.

Release date: 2019

Before Covid, the Frontières market had become the place to be for all genre-loving professionals. Each year, it took place in three phases, in Montreal, Cannes and in a major European city for the packaging and financing phase. It is in this context that the legend of Grave was born.

Today, the new film that everyone is talking about on this platform of specialized producers, international sellers, distributors and directors is Sea Fever. Produced in Ireland by Brendan McCarthy for Fantastic film, co-produced in Belgium by Frakas, Sea Fever won the Frontières prize in 2018 and was the subject of an edifying case study in Helsinki in 2019 hosted by… Wallimage.

It’s amazing because the pitfalls that the producers have avoided in order to bring the project to fruition are both numerous and unexpected. The game was worth the candle, however. Imagine a marine biologist trying to save the crew of a trawler from a horrible parasite that has been introduced into the drinking water tank. The pitch is reminiscent of Alien or The Thing, but in the open sea, where few people can hear you scream.

Directed by Neasa Hardiman, whose international salesman says that she is capable of lifting mountains and that once you have listened to her, you only want to follow her to the end of the challenge, Sea Fever will allow the sculptural Dane Connie Nielsen to attend the biggest genre festivals in 2020.

Release date: 2020

When Zoe Wittock, a young Belgian filmmaker, decides for her first feature film to tell the story of a young girl’s love for… a merry-go-round, we open our eyes wide with astonishment. This improbable romance is based on a true story of objectophilia, that of Erika Labrie, Olympic archery champion and married in 2004 to … the Eiffel Tower.

The curiosity that surrounds this project by the French actress Noémie Merlant and Emmanuelle Bercot is total, so much so that Mad Movies, the cult magazine of genre cinema in France, has devoted six pages to its filming carried out in part in Wallonia in the Park of Plopsa Coo.

The special effects of this film co-produced in Belgium by Kwassa with its French(Insolence productions) and Luxembourg(Les films fauves) partners are signed by Benuts and promise to be quite amazing.

Release date: 2020

“Kandisha, Kandisha, Kandisha, Kandisha, Kandisha”. Repeat that name five times in front of a mirror and… expect the worst. Because one does not invoke with impunity the memory of a supplicated witch, eager for revenge. All those who have seen Candymanor even Beetlejuiceknow the process and might scream plagiarism, but if Kandisha pays homage to its glorious elders it is with the respect it deserves and a perfidious idea in the back of its head: to mix the genre film and all its codes with the suburban film in the style of Band of Girls.

Directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo(A l’intérieur, Livide, Aux yeux des vivants, Leatherface), produced by Esprits frappeurs(Dans la brume), WY Productions(Yves Saint Laurent) and Scope Pictures in Belgium, Kandisha will be partly shot in Wallonia with Walloon participants throughout the post-production.

And if you say “Wallimage, Wallimage, Wallimage, Wallimage, Wallimage” in front of your mirror, what happens?

Release date: 2014

An excellent example of a whodunit oscillating between dreams and reality, fantasies and fantasy, De Behandeling is adapted from a dark novel by Mo Hayder. This thriller signed by Hans Herbots and produced by Eyeworks with Entre Chien et Loup, tells the story of a policeman disturbed by the memory of his brother’s disappearance and confronted with the death of a young child who would have been kidnapped by a… Troll.

Very dark and anxiety-provoking, the film, which reunites Geert Van Rampelberg and Laura Verlinden, is a dazzling visual success that has left its mark on all those who have had the chance to discover it in theaters or on DVD. A fine example of the audacity of Flemish cinema, which is very comfortable in all registers without ever neglecting the popular impact of a film.

Release date: 2020

In the wake of Lukas, the French director Julien Leclercq directed La terre et le sang en Wallonie, again with the support of Wallimage.

This extremely brutal, cello-string-taut rural thriller centers on a mysterious, uncompromising character with a troubled past, no doubt. He is played by Sami Bouajila, already present in the credits of Lukas and Les Braqueurs, who is about to become the filmmaker’s favorite actor.

Co-produced in Belgium by Umedia, La terre et le sang is set in a huge sawmill, very cinematic, located in Gesves, in the Namur region. It will be released on Netflix worldwide in early 2020.

Release date: 2017

Grandson of the great Vittorio and son of the composer Manuel, the young Andrea De Sica decided to become a director. Among others. Already the author of several shorts, he moved into full-length in 2016 with I fligli della notte, a Lynchian dive into a boarding school for rich and troubled teens, lost in the middle of the mountains.

The days of classes follow one another in a strict and boring torpor until the young people spot in the nearby forest an underworld establishment, carrying poisonous promises. With an icy (but delightful) cynicism, De Sica plunges us into a sensory and hypnotic spiral that makes us want to discover the rest of his filmography.

Atmospheric film ? Genre film? I fliglii della notte was shown at BIFFF in 2018 in a surprisingly quiet room. A sign that does not deceive…

Release date: 2014

Belgium has few big names clearly identified as directors of genre films. The most famous is undoubtedly Fabrice Du Welz, author of a sulphurous Ardennes trilogy initiated with Calvary and continued with Alleluia, a film produced by Panique and co-financed by Wallimage.

Bathed in a sticky fantasy atmosphere reflecting the state of mind of its main protagonists, Alleluia is nevertheless a dark, immoral, irreverent and disturbing film. Grainy image by Manu Dacosse, borderline interpretation by Lola Dueñas and Laurent Lucas, suffocating climax that can evoke that of Shining, Alleluia was selected in Cannes and Toronto, won four Magritte of Belgian cinema (best picture, best sound, best set design, best editing) and a prestigious Méliès d’Or in Sitges.

Adoration, which closes the trilogy and will hit the screens in the next few months, promises to be brighter than the two previous installments, but under the direction of Fabrice Du Welz we are well aware that this adjective is probably relative.

Release date: 2012

In 2011, Jean-Baptiste Leonetti reunites Sami Bouajila and Julie Gayet in a dystopian universe, cold and agonizing. In this dehumanized world, Philippe and Marie, two orphans, grow up together. 20 years later, they are married, but their lives have taken a markedly different course: Philippe is a cold and implacable executive. Mary is a helpless witness to what they have become to each other: strangers. Their destiny changes when Marie decides to defy the system to preserve what remains of their love. How far will they go to continue to exist as two, alone against all?

Putting the icy form of the film at the service of its purpose, White Square (Tarantula) enchanted the critics of Écran fantastique who found that “this promising first production evokes cult films such as They live! or even Green Sun while appropriating an original subject and a clean style that departs from the traditional rules of the genre.” All is said. A little known film, to be discovered!

Release date: 2010

A prolific screenwriter, Gilles Marchand had already worked with Laurent Cantet(Les Sanguinaires, Ressources humaines) and his friend Dominik Moll(Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien) when he decided to direct Qui a tué Bambi.

After writing other feature films such as Lemming (Moll), Feux rouges or L’avion (Cédric Kahn), he goes back behind the camera in 2010 for L’autre monde. At that time, the subject of alienation by the virtual is very trendy and the prolific screenwriter plays this card to the fullest by confronting a teenager with no big stories but addicted to online games, to a fascinating young woman who is looking for… a partner to die in the very disturbing virtual game Black Hole.

Aesthetically pleasing, offbeat and rather nerdy, The Other World(Versus) evokes Blue Velvet by its strangeness and the fantasies it develops in this world. And in the other.

Release date: 2005

The theme of twins has been treated a lot in movies. Many directors have tested its effectiveness. Cronenberg with Dead Ringers, De Palma with Sisters of Blood or, in a completely different style, François Ozon with his incandescent Double Lover.

Harry Cleven, who loves strange atmospheres, destabilizes Benoit Magimel by making him discover late in life the existence of a twin brother he had never heard of. But delving into your past can also affect your present… and compromise your future, as the protagonists of this convoluted psychological thriller are about to discover.

A rare filmmaker, but determined to play only very personal cards, Harry Cleven will return to the forefront a few years later with the disturbing and poetic My Angel, also co-financed by Wallimage.

Release date: 2017

Even if it is not a very established tradition in the French-speaking world, genre films can also be humorous. To make the addicts of the Youtube generation howl with laughter is the main objective of the director Tony Datis, a video clip virtuoso who dreamed of making a feature film in an offbeat and personal style.

Take an old isolated mansion, a bunch of students who come to celebrate the new year and an unexpected resident with not very humanistic ambitions, immerse in it social network stars like Mister V, Ludovik, Jérome Niel or Kemar and you get a cocktail that obviously evokes famous Anglo-Saxon references (the Scary Movies in the lead), but has disarmed the old guard of critics and the traditional audience in France and Belgium.

Very offbeat, sometimes in bad taste but totally assumed in all its excesses, Le Manoir (shot in Belgium under the aegis of Nexus) is a treat for the fans of the famous Bagel studio who wondered how their idols could go to the next level.