my dad is a sausage photo by Kris Dewitte courtesy A Private View

Source: Kris Dewitte/ A Private View

‘My Dad Is A Sausage’

Studio Hamburg has boarded international sales for Anouk Fortunier’s debut feature My Dad Is A Sausage. 

The Belgian feature is being presented as a work in progress today at Flanders Image’s CONNeXT event in Ghent.

Dries Phlypo produces for A Private View, which has recent credits including 2019 festival hit The Best Of Dorien B and 2017 Kurdish-Belgian drama Zagros.

The comedy/drama is a co-production between Belgium, the Netherlands (The Film Kitchen) and Germany (Leitwolf Filmproduktion).

Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem wrote the story, about a 12-year-old girl whose dad has a midlife crisis and quits his banking job to become an actor. This adventure reminds him what really matters.

The cast is led by Johan Heldenbergh (The Broken Circle Breakdown), Savannah Vandendriessche and Hilde De Baerdemaeker.

The film is in production now, shooting in Ghent and Brussels, for delivery in summer 2020.

The filmmakers say their target audience is families with children aged 8 to 12. Fortunier said, “Although the comedy is wild and hilarious, the story is true and touching.”

Thore Vollert, director of marketing and acquisitions at Studio Hamburg Enterprises, said, “The film underlines its theme of a light teenage melancholy with a fine sense of humour throughout that appeals to the whole family.

It is this rare combination of a universal topic narrated with a fresh, modern twist that makes the project exceptionally valuable and that got us involved as a sales partner early on.”

Producer Phlypo added, “My Dad Is A Sausage is a buddy movie with a father and his daughter about a modern-day family that reinvents itself. The film feels very recognizable: aren’t we all ‘sausages’ in the end trying to live our life to the fullest? The shooting of the film was one big adventure that proved the talent of the director Anouk Fortunier.”

Fortunier previously directed the short documentary 4x7: Joris and fiction short Strange Bird