Bas Devos’s Visitor, about a 70-year-old man selling his house; Koen Mortier’s Spice, a drama that follows a middle-class couple struggling to cope when their teenage son becomes psychotic; and Brecht De Groot’s romantic drama It’s Going To Be Spectacular. I Promise, were among the feature projects to which international attendees responded warmly at the second annual Flanders Film Days, which took place in Ghent this week.
Additionally, festival selectors said they were intrigued by Benjamin Deboosere’s hybrid drama The Decapitation of Ousmane Sembene By The Commission For Classification Of Cinematography, which uses satire to explore why one of African director Sembene’s greatest films was largely spurned in France.
Of the total of 52 projects, 20 were feature documentaries.
Sales agents spoke highly of Frederike Migom’s partly animated documentary To Be Me, produced by Emmy Oost, about teenagers in a psychiatric hospital. Many also liked Andrés Lübbert’s The Serpent’s Egg, looking at the illegal activities of various Nazis in Chile after the Second World War, and Reiner Holzemer’s latest fashion doc The Six, telling the story of the six young fashion students from Antwerp, including Dries Van Noten, who together set out to conquer the fashion world.
Overall, the second edition of FFD was very well received by the local sector and international visitors.
“It’s a great moment to meet sales agents on the one side and festivals on the other side. It’s really a great showcase,” said Dimitri Verbeeck, managing producer and partner at Belgian production outfit Caviar. “It’s extremely helpful just to show the world what is coming out of Flanders.”
“The project quality is very high in general,” said Barbara Wurm, section head of the Berlinale Forum, which has previously screened Devos’ films. “It gives a good overview, and it’s a great size for some wonderful networking,” she said.
Sales agents in attendance included Nicholas Kaiser of Paradise City Sales, Wouter Jansen, ceo of Vienna-based sales outfit Square Eyes, which picked up Isabelle Tollenaere’s Paris Paris from last year’s selection and Germany-based Patra Spanou.
“It brought together the right people,” said Spanou of FFD. “With regard to the content, it is very close to my kind of movies, arthouse films with market potential but not afraid to be more edgy.”
Denis Krupnov of London-based sales outfit Reason8 has picked up an as-yet-undisclosed Flemish project pitched at last year’s event.
“It was a very good range of projects, experimental films, documentaries on topics ranging from homelessness to fashion to genre films, with a mix of established directors and first-time directors,” he said of the 2026 lineup. “From the point of view of festivals and sales agents, this is a good approach to show a lot of films so everyone can find what they are looking for.
A shadow was cast over the start of FFD by the shock news of the impending closure of the regional film fund, Screen Flanders, which had been due to celebrate its 15th anniversary.
Karla Puttemans, director of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), the organisation that oversees the FFD, expressed concerns about the damage that could be caused to the wider regional industry.
“Screen Flanders has generated a lot of investment in our sector, especially abroad,” she said.
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