Dieter Diependaele

Biniam Girmay, a 17 year old promising cyclist from the African country Eritrea, dreams of one day riding the Tour de France, the most prestigious Grand Tour in the world. For years he thought the Tour was only for European or white cyclists, as over its more than 100 editions, only a handful of the participants were black. Biniam’s evolving performances give a rare insight into cycling in Africa. But to make it into an international Pro Team, Europe’s visa procedures are a constant hassle. And once he marries in Eritrea and becomes a father, the distance of 6.000kms takes its toll. Against all odds, Biniam climbs up the international rankings. When at age 21, he wins his first ‘Classic’, he proves African riders can win big races. He becomes a cycling hero overnight, but can he change cycling forever?

Set in Brussels, the film revolves around a potential love story between a Romanian construction worker and a Belgian-Chinese doctorate student of moss, who cross paths just before the former is about to move back home.

Under the tutelage of commander Walter Van Dyck, young recruits of the Belgian Armed Forces receive their basic military training. By means of role-play, an image of their future as professional soldiers steadily appears. Echo meticulously documents this intentional metamorphosis, in which subjects are instructed in a new way of looking, listening and thinking.

Brahim is a young man, and secretly gay. At his mother’s birthday party, tensions around his unaccepted sexuality become unbearable. Brahim flees the oppressive family home into the night, where a terrible encounter awaits...

Why We Fight? is a cinematographic film that tries to understand the violence around us, but also within ourselves, in order to better cope with the world today.

After graduation, Billie and Lucas are faced with big decisions: move in together as a couple or rather share a flat with friends? Full of affection for each other and curiosity about what’s to come, they feel their way forward, together and individually.

While dancing, bees tell each other stories about the world around them. People also claim a role in those stories, sometimes very close and intimate, sometimes distant and on an industrial scale. Nina de Vroome's thoughts also swarm with the bees: from the smallest cell in a honeycomb to the global economy, her essayistic nature documentary Globes charts the bond between humans and bees. As accomplished storytellers, they both give shape to their lives under the sun.

Shot in the German countryside, Catskin is a mysterious and alluring portrait of Ludwig, a teenage boy who lives a simple life with his father, grandmother, and their cats.

After a long day at work, fiftyeight-year-old Khadija falls asleep on the last subway train. When she wakes up at the end of the line, she has no choice but to make her way home on foot. On her nocturnal journey she finds herself compelled to ask for and give help to the other inhabitants of the night.

In the Philippines, women get deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies. In one of the many training centers dedicated to domestic work, a group of trainees are getting ready to face both homesickness and the possible abuses lying ahead during a series of role-playing exercises.

An unsettling look at a group of young people that seem to linger in a kind of perpetual twilight, while playing and getting high. Like dancing on the brink of an abyss that stares defiantly at you. A film that moves from being observational to being abstract and sensorial. The revelation of a unique talent. Precise, powerful, with a touch of techno.

Confronted with the apparent darkness of the world, three people search for meaning, love and kindness in the capital of Europe.

Jimi, a young man living in the Brussels' neighbourhood Cité Modèle, tries to pass on a parcel to a local woman that was delivered to his apartment by mistake. When Jimi can't locate her, finding her becomes an obsession.

An ex-con's attempts to live a quiet life are derailed when the daughter of the woman sheltering him is the victim of a vicious attack.

Captured through a light microscope, Reclaiming Vision features a diverse cast of microorganisms, sampled from the brackish waters of the inner Oslo Fjord, alongside algae, cultivated at the University of Oslo. The film reveals various processes in the water that are hidden to the naked human eye. By investigating the brackish water, its inhabitants, its properties, and the traces left by human activities, the film is a reflection upon the relationship we humans have with our surroundings, especially through what we cannot see.

In Blue Orchids, Johan Grimonprez creates a double portrait of two experts situated on opposite ends of the same issue—the global arms trade. The stories of Chris Hedges, a former New York Times war correspondent, and Riccardo Privitera, arms and equipment dealer for the now-defunct Talisman Europe Ltd, provide an unusual and disturbing context for shocking revelations about the industry of war. While interviewing Privitera and Hedges for Grimonprez’s recently released feature Shadow World (2016), it became clear that the two men were describing the same anguish and trauma, but from paradoxical perspectives. One has dedicated his life to unmasking lies, while the other has built his life on them. Both their personal and political histories gradually reveal the depths of suffering and duplicity, showing that the arms trade is a symptom of a profound illness: greed.

A detailed investigation into the political and economic interests that, since the beginning of the 20th century, have pulled the strings of the arms trade, hidden in the shadows, feeding the shameful corruption of politicians and government officials and promoting a state of permanent war throughout the world, while they cynically asked for a lasting and universal peace.

Grands travaux is situated at the Institute Anneessens-Funck, a Dutch-speaking vocational school in the centre of Brussels where young students have come to learn an occupation. The film documents and stages that which gives shape to their lives: the practical assignments and classes at school, football, the ups and downs of their love lives, as well as the ongoing search for housing and employment. Depicting the daily life within the school walls, Grands travaux also aims at sketching an image of Brussels today, placing its youngsters at the very centre.

The extravagantly rich Grace wants to revive a 20-year old love affair. Mark travels to Ireland, together with pushy Ronnie and pretends to be his deceased brother Michel.

Twin babies are separated at birth. The girl grows up in a middle-class environment, her brother in a street gang. Twelve years later, their paths cross again.

Stef moved to a new home, but there is another man in his home, Theo. Theo is the previous owner of the house, he died a few years ago. Stef seems to be the only one who can see him.

Herman and Marie, a couple in their fifties, arrive in Istanbul to pick up the luggage of their deceased son. In his backpack. Herman discovers a logbook of their son's trip through Turkey. Herman decides to reconstruct his son's last journey, to see what he has seen. He drags along his wife into a, what he believes to be, cathartic venture.

Lao Yang is head of logistics of the group. He is responsible for the equipment, building materials and food (mainly chickens) to arrive in the isolated Chinese prefab camp. The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things but so far the team hasn't received anything. With Eddy (a Congolese man who speaks Mandarin fluently) as an intermediate, Lao Yang is forced to leave the camp and deal with local Congolese entrepreneurs, because without the construction materials the road works will cease. What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny roller coaster of negotiations and misunderstandings, as Lao Yang learns about the Congolese way of making deals.

Some people are struggling to fit in, to go with the flow. Others are fighting to stand out. Who wants to be in a rat race that leaves no room for personality? The fact is: we never get any younger, no matter how much we buy the illusion. In the end there's only a painful cycle of disappointment. This is an accidental film. One scene led to another. A kind of story occurred.

Fifteen year old Deborah meets Jennifer who steers her into a career as an escort. Under the alias Bo she begins a new life that she cannot handle and starts a downward spiral that only she can end.

A young girl Marie faces the troubles of growing up when her mother takes a new boyfriend home.

In 2004 Wim Vandekeybus shot a 52-minute feature based on his successful performance Blush. Carried by the music of David Eugene Edwards and Woven Hand and with texts by the Flemish author Peter Verhelst, Blush is a dazzling voyage swinging between the heavenly landscapes of Corsica and the slummiest depths of Brussels. It is an exploration of the savage subconscious, of mythical forests, of conflicting instincts, of imagination, where the body has reasons unknown to the mind. In dance sequences of attraction, confrontation and repulsion the performers take on animal metamorphoses…

A film about the things of life: girls, boys, scooters… Anyway, you know how it is.