The next edition of the Brussels European Film Festival will be held at the prestigious Flagey venue from June 30 till July 8, 2006. In its search for talented new directors, the Film Festival focuses on first and second European movies. Following the footsteps of events such as the festivals of Sundance and Angers, Brussels wants to give these young directors a suitable forum to show their excellent results.

Therefore, an official jury composed of great personalities in European cinema, will be gathered. After last year’s tandem, Dominique Deruddere and Bouli Lanners, we are pleased to count among us the young Belgian directors Fabrice du Welz and Fien Troch. A complete list of jury members will be announced later.

Fien Troch

Fien Troch, daughter of the famous film editor Ludo Troch, studied film at Sint-Lukas in Brussels. Born on May 11, 1978, she shot her first short movie, Verbrande Aarde, at the age of twenty. The film was awarded with the Prize of the Jury at the Brussels International Film Festival. The next year she directed a second short film, Wooww, that was selected by some fifteen international film festivals and won the Canal+ Prize at Leuven Kort and the Best Film Award at the Irish Festival of Cork. In 2000 she continued this success with a third short movie, Maria. This film travelled the international festival circuit but it is in Belgium where it received the Canvas Award at the Grote Ongeduld and the Prize of the Flemish Community at the International Film Festival of Brussels. In 2001 Fien Troch made her fourth short film, Cool Sam and Sweet Suzie, a movie for and about children. In 2005 she made her first feature film, Someone else’s happiness (Een ander zijn geluk), a strong and moving film assembling all the elements of her original style. Leading actors are Ina Geerts, Viviane De Muynck (both actrices of the Jan Lauwers’ Need Company), Natali Broods, Johanna ter Steege and Johan Leysen. The film was selected by numerous international film festivals as Toronto, San Sebastian, Seattle, Buenos Aires, Ghent, Taipei, Angers (Award of the Jury) and Thessaloniki (where it obtained the Best Film Award, Best Script Award, Best Actrice Award for Ina Geerts and a nomination for Natali Broods). Someone else’s happiness’also received three nominations for the Plateau Awards, the Belgian Oscars.



Fabrice du Welz

Fabrice du Welz, born on October 21, 1972, first studied at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Liège and later at the INSAS in Brussels. From 1990 on he made a large series of Super 8 movies. Later he wrote comic sequences for Canal+ France (namely for Nulle Part Ailleurs and La Grande Famille) and animated broadcasts for Canal+ Belgium (among them Kulturo and Fabrice fait son cinéma). In 1999 he shot the short film Quand on est amoureux, c'est merveilleux awarded with the Grand Prize at the Festival of Gerardmer. In 2004 he created his first feature film The Ordeal (Calvaire), produced by La Parti Production. Acted by Laurent Lucas and Jackie Berroyer, this exciting movie was selected by several festivals as Cannes (Critics' Week), Toronto, Namur (where it won the Ciné&FX Prize), Ghent, Gerardmer (where it obtained three prizes: Award of the feature film Jury, International Press Award and Première Prize) and Rotterdam. Calvaire also got the 20th Special Prize of the French critics hereby honouring a controversial, shameless, even terrifying movie. Fabrice du Welz is now preparing his second feature film and animates a new broadcast on movies on BeTV.

Director of the Brussels European Film Festival is Dominique Janne. Jan De Clercq is responsible for the festival’s programme. This year the festival will again be linked to Cinédécouvertes, the festival event of the Belgian Cinémathèque Royale, directed by Gabrielle Claes. Programmes and more details about both festivals will be provided at our press conference on Friday June 9 in the morning.