Flanders Cinema Scores at TIFF, Cannes, Oscar Race — SkimNews
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- Flanders cinema returned to the Berlinale competition after 45 years with Anke Blondé's "Dust," then saw Lukas Dhont's drama "Coward" earn a rare joint best actor award at Cannes for leads Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne; "Coward" was also selected as Belgium's Oscar entry — Dhont's third consecutive submission after "Girl" and "Close"
- Michaël R. Roskam's "Le Faux Soir" world premieres at TIFF in the Special Presentations program, marking the Oscar-nominated "Bullhead" director's first Belgian feature since 2017's "Race and the Jailbird"; the thriller dramatizes a 1943 Resistance plot to print a fake edition of Belgian newspaper Le Soir, which Roskam calls "the world's first media hack"
- Both "Coward" and "Le Faux Soir" are cross-regional co-productions supported by both the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) and Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles — "Coward" is majority Flemish while "Le Faux Soir" is majority Walloon, and producer Michiel Dhont says the arrangement makes the projects "at its heart, a Belgian film"
- Filip Anthonissen's Flemish animated short "Melk" became the first animated film to win Locarno's Pardino d'Oro for best international short and is now headed to TIFF; the animator credits a VAF program that lets animation students apply for funding without a producing partner
- VAF funding procedures are "rigorous, competitive and highly selective" per Roskam, and new director Karla Puttemans — who took over earlier this year — emphasizes the fund's "close, trust-based and hands-on relationship" with filmmakers as a deliberate small-fund advantage
- Flemish filmmakers are still grappling with how to lure domestic audiences back to theaters; Puttemans noted local viewers respond to "quality stamps through selections at major festivals," while Roskam urged the region to find "inventive ways to bring audiences back to cinemas"
Why it matters: Three consecutive Dhont Oscar submissions, a Cannes acting prize, and two TIFF premieres signal that Flanders' compact public-funding model — combining financing with creative freedom and cross-regional collaboration with Wallonia — is producing auteur cinema that competes globally, even as the region still struggles to convert international buzz into domestic ticket sales.
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