Johan Leysen

Mark suffers from an intense form of self-hatred, which translates into neglectful, chilling and destructive behaviour. Mark lives in an equally destructive and hateful town. The only exception is his dying grandfather who lives in a hospice. In the hospice, Mark meets Lisa, a nurse. Mark’s behaviour frees her from her angelic yoke, but their bizarre bond slowly starts spinning out of control.

Matt, an influencer and young parent to newborn Julius, discovers a dark secret from his dementing father's past. He starts an in-depth investigation, which consequently opens a Pandora's box of secrets and unravels more family dramas than anticipated. Matt's wife, Liv, is deeply concerned and will do everything in her power not to lose him, but is it too late..?

A young woman struggles to cope with her elderly father's out-of-the-blue announcement he considers his life complete and will end it by his next birthday.

Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.

On this beautiful, bright first day of summer, Claire Darling has decided to get rid of all her estate. She’s laid down all her favourite objects on her front lawn for one splendid garage sale. As a horde of curious bystanders and neighbors fights over the ridiculously underpriced antiques, each object resurrects flashes of Claire Darling’s tragic and flamboyant life. Alerted by her childhood friends, Marie Darling, Claire’s estranged daughter, is forced to come back to the family mansion to stop this sale and unveil the reasons behind her mother’s eccentric decision.

Pamela, a young Roma, insolent, spontaneous and funny, embarks on a journey into the unknown, breaking away from the traditions that suffocate her. She arrives in Belgium with three words of French and the hope that marriage will change her and her daughter’s destiny.

What on earth can an adult, childless man write to a kindergarten class? When a lone wolf finds a balloon with a note attached, he seizes the opportunity to pass on his hard-learned life lessons to the unknown infant that sent it. Lessons that do not necessarily line up with a pre-schooler’s experiences, but which may be valuable to him or her at a later age. In the process, unconnected generations find each other in this moving short film, based on a story by Tommy Wieringa.

When her mother abandons her dementing father, Alex unexpectedly finds herself at a crossroads. As she moves back in the parental house to look after her father, she starts questioning her own life. Does she want to stay with her adulterous husband? She tolerated his affairs for years, but is she really happy with him? Or should she, like her parents, drop the facade?

Frank Valken, high-flying robber, has just made a final masterful break. At least that’s what he believes… Ideal suspects, Valken and his gang find themselves involved in a criminal case of thirty years. It seems that the crazy killers are back.

An old man who isolated himself from civilization receives an unexpected visitor.

Alice leads a routine life as an escort and dodges social contact. When she's forced to take care of her son after the death of her ex, her apparent indifference seems to fade away and she gets confronted with her emotional emptiness.

A former European song contest singer, fading away in a pâté factory, falls in love with a young, aspiring boxer. Together, they decide she should attempt a comeback.

In this drama, Ben is faced with the anger and grief of his entire village when, inebriated, he causes a road accident in which his girlfriend Tinka dies. Ben is sent to prison and his resentful in-laws get custody of his little daughter Cindy. When Ben after two years returns to the southern village of Waldstille, he intends to restore contact with Cindy as soon as possible - despite opposition from his parents-in-law.

1948 - Louis-Ferdinand Céline in Denmark, in exile, accused of collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation of the France. He is accompanied by Lucette, his wife and his cat Bebert.

We enter the film like into a dream. Paris. Lenz looks for Madeleine who has mysteriously disappeared. He encounters Hélène, a young woman bewitched by her self-destructive impulses. A crazy love develops between them. Louis and Léna, devoured by their jealousy, lead Lenz to follow, against his better wishes, Hélène into the subterranean world of a dark sexual exploitation network. Although lost, lost from the first, love is what saves us.

God lives in Brussels. On Earth though, God is a coward, with pathetical morals and being odious with his family. His daughter, Ea, is bored at home and can't stand being locked up in a small apartment in ordinary Brussels, until the day she decides to revolt against her dad...

With his wife in labor, father-to-be Thomas (Malik Zidi) speeds to the hospital, and in the process, accidentally kills a young man on the road. That death sets into motion events that will change everyone’s lives forever, including the young man’s mother Marie-France (Nathalie Baye), who cannot recover from the trauma. Nine years later, Marie-France takes a job as Thomas’s secretary without him knowing about her connection to his past. As Marie-France’s maternal rage reaches tragic proportions, she insinuates herself into his life, his work and his family in this classic thriller à la Hitchcock.

The suffocating love between between a father and a son who, as modern outlaws, struggle to survive in the depleted and neglected southern Dutch province of Limburg.

2 November 2004, shortly before nine in the morning. In The Hague, the report comes in that in Amsterdam Theo van Gogh has been murdered. All warning bells start ringing. With the country in flames, sometimes literally, politicians and officials in The Hague have to neutralise all sorts of known and unknown stings, and just when Van Gogh’s cremation seems to herald a period of relative peace, a second explosion follows: the attack on the Hofstad Network in the Laakkwartier in The Hague. A reconstruction of nine days of political high tension and flying dust, a decade after the assassination of the trendsetting filmmaker and TV presenter.

On the night of New Year's Eve, a small group penetrates into the room of an old hotel in ruins. Carmine, the oldest of the group, poses a challenge to one of the men, Furio: he has 4 months to restore the hotel and inaugurate it with great pomp. Aware of the difficulties but anxious to prove the point, Furio accepts encouraged by his wife Margo who believes that this assignment will allow the couple to rediscover the lost momentum.

When his wife's murderer is released due to a procedural error, Luc will do everything in his power to stop it from happening... He is going to take justice into his own hands and will then compete with the constitutional state which let him down.

Isabelle, a 17-year-old student, loses her virginity during a quick holiday romance. When she returns home, she begins a secret life as a prostitute for a year.

Her mother has just died. Her father is not what she had thought. Caught between an uncertain past, which she knows only through the photographs her mother has left behind, and the prospect of a marriage that she does not really want, Elisa sets out to discover the truth. But will she recognize it when she finds it?

As a veteran of the Latin-American guerilla wars, Pierre Goldman became a mythical figure of the French protest movement of the '60s.

Lucretia is a killer for hire. Specialised in poisoning and passionate about opera, she'll have to fulfill a difficult contract in the heart of the Swiss alps. Posing as a singer, Lucretia will have to appear on the scene of the higly exclusive Festival d'Ermeux and try to kill one of her partners: British bariton Alexander Child. Having recently acquired a Scottish distillery, he remains the only obstacle to a strategic pipeline project with considerable economic stakes; having recently won a tough legal battle against British Oil, their last resort is to eliminate him. Complicating everything is Rico, sent by the French contra-espionage, who tries to infiltrate the orchestra and stop the plot against Alexander Child.

In 1430, Joan of Arc, the prisoner of a powerful lord of the north of France is sold to the English. As a captive awaiting her death, she is approached by different men for whom she is believed to be the embodiment of the infinite.

ANTWERP CENTRAL takes the viewer on a journey through the physical and mental space of Antwerp’s railway cathedral, from its construction to the present day. The film covers three centuries of Belgian railway history: from the moment that the national railway company laid its first tracks to the development of the high-speed rail link in the 21st century. Echoes of Belgium’s colonial past and the location of the station in the centre of the bustling diamond district and next to the city zoo add a surreal touch as contrasting pairs, such as animal and human, nature and industry, baroque and modernity, dilapidation and renovation are complexly juxtaposed.

Dispatched to a small Italian town to await further orders, assassin Jack embarks on a double life that may be more relaxing than is good for him.

A biography of the Belgian nun Jeannine Deckers, who became a popular singer in the early 1960s and struggled with the contradiction between the church and her true self.

An aspiring tennis player is taken under the wing of an established player as his family life falls apart.

West Point is a 'film noir', a story of family and emigration. It's La Cabo da Rocha, Portugal, the western-most point of the European continent. Opposite the USA, it's a metaphor of Ellis Island. It's the street dances and it's the part of what has been forgotten that Alexander and his sister Jeanne must accept in order to break free from the original crime, the feeling of abandonment and the color of wheat.

Young Tiuri has to pass the final test before before being knighted by king Dagonaut. He has to pass a night in the chapel, what is suddenly disturbed by a strangers request of help. With his decision to help the stranger, Tiuri abandons his given task and starts into an adventure, that will shape the destiny of Dagonaut. On his journey he learns about the true meaning of love, friendship, courage and loyalty.

A confused old man, Henry, lives on his own in an old empty building that is reminiscent of a deserted palace. Henry hasn't been outside for years. The camera follows a day in his life - his simple daily chores and his eccentric rituals. Henry looks like a European from a good family, but has many Asian habits. The second protagonist is the building in which Henry is staying: the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. It is one of the best preserved examples of chinoise architecture and furnishing in the world. Neither the client nor the architect had ever set foot in Asia. In a monologue, a parallel narrative unfolds in a game with reality and fiction. Word and image, fiction and documentary become intertwined with each other and point across the frontiers of ‘East’ versus ‘West’.

A reporter who's soon to receive the Journalist of the Year Award hits a young hare on his way home. He gets out of the car to see if it's ok, but the hare runs off deeper into the forest, taking him on adventure of self-discovery.

Claire, 38, works in the litigation department of a bank. She has to deal with the case of Jacques Marey, 50, the boy she secretly loved when she was a 12-year-old. Today, Claire lives with Antoine and their daughter, Lola, 13, who falls in love with Julien, 22, Jacques's son. Like Mother like daughter ? Love stories usually end badly, but they don't necessarily repeat themselves!

Carmen, a bonobo female, flees from the research center in linguistics where she is being kept. She takes refuge at a young couple's place, Mercier and his pregnant wife Myriam. Mercier, beginning at a new job, is reluctant to welcome the ape. But Myriam makes friend with her.

The tender and supporting relationship between a young woman and her gay husband, in WW2.

One cold winter's day, Jacob and his sister Marie are abandoned in a wood by their out of work father. In his jacket Jacob finds a letter from their mother urging them to go to her brother in Spain. Once in Spain, it turns out that their uncle is dead. Marie meets Diego, a wealthy charming Spanish surgeon, and falls in love with him. Diego lives with his sick, domineering sister, Teresa. To Jacob's astonishment, Marie wants to marry Diego. Even after the wedding has taken place, jealous Jacob tries to get his sister away from Diego. When this doesn't succeed, Jacob starts to provoke his brother-in-law. It soon transpires that no one will go unpunished for this.

Dito Tsintsadze's drama focuses on a loner whose life changes dramatically, when he gets to know a beautiful, but strange girl. Lukas, a young man doing "meals on wheels" instead of military service, doesn't have many friends and leads a boring life, until he meets Isabella. The fascinating girl soon becomes his best friend, but Lukas learns she has a sexual relationship to her stepfather. Thus, he is obsessed with the idea of delivering Isabella by killing the man..

Claire lives with her wealthy adopted parents in a luxurious and isolated house in the woods. She discovers a wounded and bleeding boy her age in her family's garden shed. The boy is a young drug courier from Afghanistan; shot and wounded after serving his purpose as human packing material. Claire decides to keep the boy a secret. He slowly recovers under her care; and they fall in love. When the drug dealers return and Claire's family is due to move back to the city; they decide to flee; though Claire finds it difficult to outrun her past as an abandoned child.

De Enclave is a Dutch mini series about the mass murders in Srebrenica during the Bosnia war. It tells a part of the Bosnia war, personalized in Ibro Hadzic, who lost all of his family there.

Marc Schrader, a rookie cop caught red-handed with drugs in a police raid of an illegal rave, joins a homicide investigation conducted by Chief Inspector Minks. The victim is a naked young woman with the skin stripped off her back, killed as she staggered into traffic. As Schrader and Minks investigate the murder, the case is complicated by a finger found in the stomach of the victim. Forensic examination proves the finger belongs to Nobert Günzel, who was previously convicted of rape and assault. The police raid Günzel’s residence, and discover a blood-stained table with restraints and bits of human flesh in his basement. They also find video equipment and preserved, tattooed skin from the victim’s back. Soon, they found dead bodies buried in the garden. Günzel then goes missing.

Nearly 13, Alice rebels, telling the Paris police that her mother is a murderer. Alice has no evidence; her mother, Eva, rich and powerful, avoids charges. Alice promptly runs away, determined to find her dad whom she claims lives in Portugal. The police believe he is dead and that Alice is in denial. Nonetheless, they dispatch Anita, an Italian police officer on loan to the French, to find Alice and bring her back. Meanwhile, Eva has launched her own paramilitary force to hunt for Alice, and Alice has found a protector in Hugo, an ex-soldier turned hit man and gang member. He promises to get her to her father. All roads lead to a small town on the Portuguese coast.

In 18th century France, the Chevalier de Fronsac and his Native American friend Mani are sent by the King to the Gevaudan province to investigate the killings of hundreds by a mysterious beast.

Student Eric kills time by spying on his neighbors. Compulsively taking notes on everything within binocular range from his bedroom window, he harasses his neighbors by sending unsigned notes and making their private affairs public. When they discover his identity and draw him in, will this release him from his solitude, or confirm in his mind that he will always be the outsider?

Louis XIV, the French sun-king has two passions, establishing absolute rule over the realm -after decades of religious/civil wars- by divine right and artistic brilliancy as a dancer

Johan has three children with different women. Two adult daughters: Sophie and Virginie, and a young son in Amsterdam. Loïc gave Johan diamonds of a criminal origin. Her husband Simon thought they were his and murdered her. Then he set out his hunt for the diamonds and for killing Johan. The police thought that Johan had murdered Loïc and called his daughters, who had not known about each other. Afterwards Sophie receives a note to take a certain train to Amsterdam. A young boy gives Virginie the oral message "The treasure is in the trout". She immediately understands that this trout must be in her mother's freezer, unknown to the mother. Both girls take the train. Simon contacts them as a helpful fellow-passenger. The girls soon detect his aim of murdering them. In Brussels they escape the train. Virginie steals a car but is not as good at driving as at stealing (she will prove this again).

Joseph and Olga Stegudith, who are elderly Parisians of Viennese Jewish extraction, come to luxurious Evian with Olga's brother Michel Mazelsky to hear their son, virtuoso cellist Jascha, perform. Jascha is lovesick over violinist Anna Ghirardi, with whom he had a brief affair a year ago, although she's happily married to naturalist Primo.

Nag, a prostitute, walks the streets. One night, a violent man sends her to the hospital. There she meets Herve, a nurse obsessed with people's age and death in general. He falls madly in love with Nag and enters a world that amounts to very little.

A young boy develops a passion for archeology and tries to unravel the truth about his ancestry.

October 1997. Paul Winters (35) is deputy public prosecutor in Arnhem and is working on his first major case: an investigation in to the allegations of a Bosnian girl that she was raped by three soldiers in the Dutch UN contingent and whose brother is alleged to have been killed by them. Winters suspects that the girl is telling the truth, but he can't prove it and the case is adjourned. Then one of the men gives a revealing statement that throws a different light on the case. Winters argues in favour of reopening the case, but faces opposition from an unexpected quarter.

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.

Madeleine is with her lover, Jean-Paul, when her husband arrives home and catches the two together. Madeleine kills her husband and tells Jean-Paul to flee before the police arrive. After Jean-Paul drives away, he picks up a hitchhiker. When the car, stolen by the hitchhiker, explodes, police believe the dead hitchhiker is Jean-Paul. Madeleine takes up with Jean-Paul's brother, Bastien, while Jean-Paul, arriving in Strasbourg, is mistaken for the heir to a fortune. The detective on the case spends more time writing crime novels than investigating real-life crimes.

John Hurt stars as a scandal-hit member of parliament, dispatched to the political backwaters of the European Commission in Brussels as penance for his failures. However, once there he stumbles upon a chemical weapons outrage that points to a sinister political-industrial conspiracy.

Tragic love story about the photographer and explorer Felice Beato who travelled back to Japan in 1895 to seek his former wife O-Kiku. On the way he describes in a nostalgic letter to his brother how much he yearns for his lost love O-Kiku and how impotent he feels in an ancient Japan subject to rapid change. The journey takes him to Nagasaki and Moji, Onomichi, Mount Fuji, Yokohama and Tokyo. Places he once visited with his beloved and where he now no longer understands the people. Felice...Felice... is inspired by hand-coloured nineteenth century photos taken by e.g. Felice Beato, Sjimooka Renjo and Baron von Stilfried. In this film, shot entirely in a studio, the photos depict Felice's journey. Awarded the Golden Calf for Best Feature film in 1998. (NFF)

Under pressure from his publisher, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky gets work on his latest piece, 'Rouletenberg'. In the 27 days it takes for him to complete the novel reality and fiction become blurred; in this feverish atmosphere of excess Dostoyevsky's characters come to life as he struggles to complete his work.

The McBee family has erected a government over a future 'colony', that looks like a run-down Paris divided into sectors by the Berlin Wall. All male family members suffer from a mysterious disease and are in urgent need of organ transplants. The perfect donor, Tykho Moon, probably has been killed in a fire, but according to rumours he's still alive. Although assassins stalk the family members, the McBees start a hunt for Tykho. Trying to escape the dragnet, Alex, a sculptor, meets Lena, a killer posing as a whore.

The story of the year the Oxford and Cambridge boat race changed from a gentleman's race to one where winning was everything.

A series of seemingly unconnected events and 50 important speaking parts make this film a jigsaw puzzle to be solved by the viewer. Martin and Claire were separated in childhood, and are brought together by a series of coincidences. A tragic car crash is central to the story, but seemingly unimportant events can hold great significance. Through a montage of different film stock and techniques director Diane Bertrand creates pieces of a puzzle, from which the viewer has to piece together a story. That's the premise of the film, and it is solvable. You just have to work a bit...

Jeanne, her second husband, Michel, and her teen daughter Marie live quietly in the South of France. However, Jeanne's secret past comes back to haunt her.

Paris, Kingdom of France, August 18, 1572. To avoid the outbreak of a religious war, the Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois, sister of the feeble King Charles IX, marries the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre.

After the war, in Bucharest, a young Romanian poet arrested for having written an article denouncing Stalinist crimes, will save his life by accepting to become a hostage of the regime.

The story of a close-knit group of young kids in Nazi Germany who listen to banned swing music from the US. Soon dancing and fun leads to more difficult choices as the Nazi's begin tightening the grip on Germany. Each member of the group is forced to face some tough choices about right, wrong, and survival.

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

Six people are about to undertake a journey by foot from the very north of the Netherlands to the very south, in search of the mountains. Only two of them reach the destination.

Maria Garcia (Carmen Maura) is a television journalist and she's about to be a single mother. Her career foremost in her mind, she doesn't slow down even for a minute, despite her pregnancy. She is, however, taking Lamaze classes and is quite competently coping with the romantic attentions of a man she's not very interested in. It's not at all irrelevant that her news beat includes stories on terrorism, the greenhouse effect, pollution and genetic engineering, because when her baby's due date comes and goes, she starts hearing from her infant from in the womb. It is telling her that it and many other babies are refusing to be born into such a horrible world. She learns that this is true, and that the children born through induced labor are dying.

According to an ancient Indian tale a giant monster embryo residing in a crystal vase is predetermined to fertilize a blue-eyed woman. She will give birth to something evil to unleash horror and destruction upon human kind. Ugly septuplet brothers reproduced within the framework of mysterious genetic experiments terrorize a young innocent girl who seems to be chosen for the sinister predestination.

This melodramatic film follows Eline Vere, as she attempts to break free from the confines of her narrow existence in The Hague through three tumultuous and ultimately disastrous courtships. Adaptation of Louis Couperus' novel Eline Vere.

She's a lawyer with a social conscience. He's a calculating industrialist who keeps many deals hidden from her. But when she discovers that her husband is involved in illegal arms traffic and is also having an affair with one of her colleagues, a direct confrontation ensues.

After seven months of pregnancy a husband and wife learn that their unborn child won't survive for long.

Hilde earns just enough to support herself and her son, but when his father returns the troubles begin.

Aging opera singer Joachim Dallayrac retires from the stage and retreats to the countryside to school two young singers, Sophie and Jean. Although the rigorous training takes its toll on both teacher and students, there is plenty of time for relationships to develop between the three. Based on their teacher's reputation, Sophie and Jean are invited to participate in a singing contest staged by Prince Scotti. Scotti's protege is set up to get revenge for Scotti's defeat at the hands of Dallayrac in a similar competition many years ago. The young students overcome Scotti's trickery to win the competition. Written by Kevin Kraynak

The Inquisition is in full swing in 16th century Flanders. Wanted for his dissident writings, the alchemist doctor Zeno has been wandering Europe under an assumed name for twenty years. But he remains a non-conformist. He returns to his native Bruges, where he thinks he has been forgotten. In this silent labyrinth where the faces of the past resurface, he rediscovers his identity and thus signs his death warrant.

A young man falls in love with extra-liberated Giulia. Their relationship becomes very passionate, but Giulia has no limits in her sexual fantasies and games. Poor guy, will soon discover he'll have to pay a price for Giulia. He'll have to put up with all her strange and pervert desires, until of course he reaches his limits.

One year after their father has died mysteriously at the Wadden Sea, two brothers visit the same place where their father died. Hidden feelings about each other come to the foreground.

Two very different friends who share an apartment in Amsterdam have reached a dead end in their lives. The arrival of a parcel looks like an opportunity for a change.

A woman and her daughter lives in Oostdijk, a village near Amsterdam. One night when the mother is on her way home, she is killed in a car accident in the street they live in.

A college student gets pregnant without having intercourse, affecting people close and unrelated to her in different ways.

A murderer is at large: a well-dressed businessman incarcerates his victims, chains and starves them, and documents their death amid their filth with Instamatic snaps. Meanwhile, in another part of town, a woman joins a brothel...

Director Leon de Winter has taken a thriller with political and psychological overtones, and scrambled it into a series of vignettes that are mixed-up in time and in location, thereby dashing any hope of following the story. A journalist goes to a southern European country to interview a well-known terrorist who has refused to stop his activities even though the revolution he fought for ended successfully five years earlier. Questions are raised about adopting violence as a way of life without at first realizing it and about the seeming impossibility of raising the consciousness of backwater cultures. Perhaps because of the way the story has been filleted into fragments, characters like the journalist and terrorist do not have enough continuous screen time to build up their individuality, a second factor that makes it difficult to become involved in the drama.

Unrelenting pessimism dominates this slow-paced, dark film, the debut feature from director Digna Sinke dedicated to an archetypal born loser named Marian (Josee Ruiter). Marian is a journalist who has been working in Latin America and who arrives home just after her father dies to find out that the man she had married for purely political reasons might be deported because the authorities found out he was not living with her. Meanwhile, Marian is upset that her mother and sister are keeping her mentally handicapped brother in an institution, and she goes there to get him released into her custody -- a mistake it turns out. He is actually worse off with her, and vice-versa. On top of everything, Marian cannot break away from the depression she feels over a tragic incident that happened while she was in Latin America -- and anything she does is colored by that moment from the past. These burdens become almost too much to bear, both for Marian and the viewers.

Koekebakker is a successful journalist. His old mates, however, turned out failures: Bekker has lost all hope of changing the world, Hoyer works for the socialist party, Bavink suffers from mental problems and Kees is a simple laborer.

Martin (Heinz Bennent), a sculptor, is dying in his bed on a barge that floats along a fog-shrouded waterway. As he agonizingly descends into a final oblivion, his second wife is at his bedside, comforted by his first wife -- also present.

During the second world war law student Hannie Schaft is a member of the Dutch resistance movement.

Fred, a 28-year-old bachelor from a quiet village in the Ardennes, is forester and grave digger. He is in love with Isabel but she has always loved their childhood friend Peter. Then Peter returns after a failed marriage.