EXCLUSIVE: Hans Everaert’s prolific Antwerp-based production outfit Menuetto is bringing eight feature projects to the inaugural Flanders Film Days (FFD) in Ghent (October 7-8), led by Felix van Groeningen’s Let Love In starring Luca Marinelli.
Mubi is co-financing and The Match Factory is handling international sales on the project, which is van Groeningen’s follow-up to Cannes 2022 jury prize winner The Eight Mountains. Let Love In, which is coming to the end of a 35-day shoot in Belgium, stars Marinelli (who also fronted The Eight Mountains) alongside Charlotte Vandermeersch.
Everaert described the film, which will be presented as a work in progress at FFD, as an “auto-fiction” partly inspired by events in van Groeningen and Vandermeersch’s real-life relationship, about a couple going through a crisis but trying to stay together.
Van Groeningen and Vandermeersch, who co-wrote the screenplay with Anne Paulicevich, are still shooting so won’t attend FFD, but have recorded an introduction to the project to screen at the event.
The film is a co-production between Menuetto, van Groeningen’s company Rufus, and Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli’s Mediawan-owned Our Films, in collaboration with Circle One. Further financing comes from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), Kinepolis Film Distribution (KFD), Proximus, VRT and the Belgian tax shelter. Kinepolis will release the film in Belgium.
Everaert’s other projects include Heysel 85, directed by Teodora Ana Mihai and set during the tragedy of the Heysel stadium disaster in May 1985 when 39 spectators, mostly Juventus fans, were killed during the European Cup final. The film is a co-production between Menuetto, the Dardennes’ Les Films du Fleuve, Topkapi in the Netherlands and Hamburg-based Leitwolf, and is being presented as a work in progress at FFD.
The story is told through the eyes of two ficionalised characters: Marie (Violet Braeckman), the daughter and also press attaché of the mayor of Brussels (who was drunk on the night of the tragedy), and Luca Rossi (Matteo Simoni), a Belgian journalist with Italian roots who was reporting live for RAI radio. Even as the death toll mounted, the match continued, and fans cheered when Michel Platini scored the winning goal for Juventus.
The €3.8m film has completed shooting and should be ready for early 2026 festivals, with a sales agent expected to be announced shortly. “It’s a fiction film inspired by real events,” Everaert commented. Kinepolis is handling the local release.
Also being presented in Ghent as a project pitch is Menuetto’s Torpor, directed by first-timer Meltse Van Coillie. The project has funding from the VAF and Netherlands Film Fund, and Everaert is seeking Nordic coproduction partners with an aim to shoot in late 2026 in the Arctic region. The film is a sci-fi about a group of scientists accompanied by a young female polar bear guard who investigate a small Arctic village where the locals spend their winters in hibernation, fast asleep.
Menuetto is also pitching new drama Strokes Of Madness, co-directed by Flemish actor-turned-filmmaker Dominique Van Malder and documentary specialist Lander Haveral and co-produced with Dutch outfit Volya.
The story is based on Haveral’s brother, a classical music prodigy who suffered mental health problems and committed suicide. Everaert describes the project as being “like Adolescence, in giving you an insight into what is happening in a teenager’s mind”.
Meanwhile, veteran Flemish filmmaker Patrice Toye has finished shooting her latest feature The Assignment, an allegorical tale about the “dubious attraction of a strong leader” and set in a youth camp just after the Second World War.
A teaser and early scene of the €4m feature will be presented at FFD. Menuetto’s co-production partners are Robert Alberdingk Thijm and Norbert ter Hal’s Dutch outfit Willy Waltz International, and Cologne-based 2Pilots; the project has backing from Eurimages.
Three more completed features will be presented by Menuetto at FFD: fossil fuel-themed documentary Charbon, directed by Manu Riche, Edoardo Ripani and Hayder Helo; Paris, Paris, directed by Isabelle Tollenaere and sold by Square Eyes, about three immigrants trying to build a new home in Paris; and Two Square Metres, Volkan Üce’s documentary about a Turkish immigrant who wants to be buried in Belgium.
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