Belgian producer Elisa Heene’s auteur-driven production company Mirage has already enjoyed several notable successes since she launched it in 2020.
Fien Troch’s 2023 film Holly was in the main competition in Venice, while Cecilia Verheyden’s coming-of-age drama Skiff screened at multiple festivals from Tallinn to Rio and Arras in 2025.
Heene is now at Flanders Film Days (FFD) in Ghent to pitch her most ambitious project yet, Troch’s €6m L’Invention Du Sauvage, which will tell the grim story of how hundreds of Congolese people were paraded around as human exhibits at the 1897 World Fair in Brussels.
“It will lift the veil on a very uncomfortable and shameful episode in Belgium’s past,” says Heene.
L’Invention Du Sauvage centres on a young Congolese woman who forms a bond with a Belgian photographer who works at the Fair to try and bring greater attention to what is happening in the “human zoo”.
An archival image from the Fair that shows two women turning their faces away from the camera was the inspiration for the project.
“There is something very powerful in that image,” says Heene. “It is an act of resistance. These women are refusing to submit to the gaze imposed on them. That is where the idea for the film came from, to turn the gaze around, and to show the Congolese people at the centre of this history with dignity and agency.”
Around half the budget is now in place for the project, which is being backed by the VAF and Creative Europe. Coproduction partners include Keplerfilm in the Netherlands, Lumen in France, Samsa in Luxembourg and the Dardennes in Wallonia.
Cineart, which has distributed Troch’s previous films, is on board as the Benelux distributor.
Emmanuel Lupia of Congolese outfit, Tosola Films, is also coproducing.
“It felt necessary to have a Congolese partner to be able to make this film,” Heene says of Lupia. “He has been there from the very beginning, from early development. He sees the film as an opportunity to engage with this shared history and to showcase Congolese talent and perspectives internationally.”
She says there is interest from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government and other official Congolese institutions in supporting the film financially.
Heene and Troch have just returned to Belgium from a research and casting trip in DRC capital Kinshasa, with shooting set to take place entirely in Belgium. The film will be in French, English, Flemish and Lingala, and the “very big cast” will be “70-80% Congolese.”
“In general we know very little about our colonial history in Belgium and, by extension, in the rest of Europe as well,” Heene suggests.
The producer is also pitching Ruben Desiere’s hybrid docu-drama Between Revolutions at FFD and has two further projects in active development: Verheyden’s love story, Tipping Point, and Mexican-Belgian director Karen Vázquez Guadarrama’s debut feature Pantano de Aves.
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