Els Dottermans
This elaborate and curated fairy tale adventure tells the story of Lampie, the lighthouse keeper's daughter, who has to climb a grand staircase every evening to light the lantern and shrink ships before the rocks. One night, in the midst of an approaching storm, she finds that her matches have run out - disaster strikes and an adventure begins.
Who's keeping the citizens of a Belgian provincial town out of their sleep? Is it Santa Clause?
Max and Tikkelotje own an unsuccessful theatre company. When Tikkelotje notices Ramon - the faithful companion to Saint Nicholas - playing the guitar and singing, she decides to kidnap both him and Slechtweervandaag, Saint Nicholas’s trusty steed. Saint Nicholas is devastated, but eventually he pulls himself together and goes around the houses to collect the children’s wishlists. An adventure involving assorted people then ensues as he tried to beat the clock to rescue the hapless pair.
Teenage girl Robyn is desperate about joining her older brothers on parties, but they don't want her around. When their parents leave for a business trip, Robyns little brother manages to realize what she has never been able to. She totally loses control.
Late 70s. The revue theatre Ancienne Belgique in Antwerp nearly has a future left, but director Leonard will not admit it. The artists and performers do not know this and try to solve their own problems. Marcel (orchestra leader), Willy (the flower shop comedian) and Jack (the producer with his stubborn character) their problems increase and everyone is sucked into the downward spiral...
Shy, gentle half-wit Dennis, whose only obsession is train-spotting, is released early on account of good behavior after a rape sentence. His parents who run a modest barbershop, skeptic André and Rita, desperately try to keep him out of girl trouble, but his victim's sister Barbara starts a hate campaign. After another girl reports abuse, Dennis is jailed and beaten black and blue daily. Barbara's boyfriend, lawyer Thomas Verelst, accepts to help 'pro deo' (no cost) and pleads that Dennis belongs in a mental institution.
Tom Vansant is an emergency physician from Brussels who is desperately searching for his daughter who ran away from home and is now missing for eighteen months. He meets a girl of whom he thinks that she knows what happened to his daughter but the girl doesn't want to talk about her past. In his search to find out why she doesn't talk about it he ends up in a small village in the Ardennes where no one wants to help him discover what really happened.
Vincke and Verstuyft are one of the best detective teams of the Antwerp police force. When they are confronted with the disappearance of a top official and the murder of two prostitutes, the trail leads to the almost retired assassin Angelo Ledda. Since Ledda starts showing symptoms of Alzheimer's, it's getting more and more difficult to complete his contracts. When he has to murder a 12-year old call-girl, he refuses and becomes a target himself. While Vincke and Verstuyft are chasing him and counting the corpses, Ledda is taking care of his employers.
Muriel moves from a small village to the big city of Brussels, hoping to start an independent life working as a museum guide. She rents a room from Laura, who has a room to spare now that her mother is in hospital. Laura is a vital and candid woman who has a child-wish but leads a very chaotic life. Meanwhile, Muriel's mother has a hard time accepting that her daughter leads a life of her own now, and she also faces some changes at the factory where she works. The movie follows the interconnected lifes of these three women of three different generations, who all face different problems.
Twelve-year-old Wim has feelings of guilt about his father's death, which cause him to get emotionally confused. Eventually, Wim loses control completely.
Guy Moeyaert is a well-meaning colonial official in a jungle district of the Belgian Congo in the last years of white colonial rule, after the Second World War, a paternalistic system where the state, unable to be properly present all over the vast, sparsely populated country, collaborates systematically with the Roman Catholic missions -in his post, father Alexis- and private enterprise, in case mainly the mining company -locally represented by engineer Lenaers- which also helps out with money and labor for such public tasks as road building. Even his grip on the natives is weak, as they live under hereditary tribal leaders, which must take from its people what they are legally obliged to deliver to the state in taxes and labor; coercion is done by force, including whipping on the bare buttocks, which Guy hates. Guy also starts a love affair with Hélène Vermarcke, who gets estranged from her husband Luk (the three were already friends in Belgium) as he devotes all his efforts the their plantation, leaving her alone with the native staff and their son, or is it Guy's? The adultery makes his position in the white community far weaker then is compatible with his position of theoretical authority without sufficient independent means. He also depends heavily on his educated black clerk Gabriel Ndazaru and ambitious white deputy Arthur. It all gets worse for everybody as the call for 'dipenda', black independence as in Ghana, gets stronger, in time even accepted 'in principle' by the Belgian government which plans a gradual transition which the idealist Guy supports but all other whites oppose, while the natives have neither patience nor insight and start attacking every symbol of the old regime, regardless of its objective value, and soon white people and 'collaborators' too- it gets physically dangerous, but Guy won't budge or flee...
After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.
A woman falls in love with a married, Belgian man. She finds out that he's married too late... although it's the second thing he says. The rest of the film is about the struggle of the man between his two loves, and of the woman not able to finish the hopeless and dangerous relationship. The title "tot ziens" (au revoir, a farewell greeting that implicates that one will see eachother again), is the ironic description of the film, which is about going away for good and then coming back again, because something is always stronger than your ratio.
A police officer investigates the case of a man shot dead in a room locked from the inside. A suicide? Then where's the gun?
Riko Tik used to be bullied as a kid, now he want revenge. He falsifies the book of the Sint so that it looks like all the kids have been naughty this year. Disguised as king Kabberdas he goes to the house of the Sint to fool the holy man with the wrong book.
