Charles Van Damme

The Silent Monologue

We hear the thoughts of Amy, a girl from a rural area of Senegal who works as a domestic for a well-to-do family in Dakar. She complains about her employer, who continuously criticizes her and gets on her case, and she talks about her dream of one day opening her own eatery. In Dakar, some 150,000 young women work as housekeepers for rich families to survive and help their families instead of going to school.

An Open Window

Can madness be described? Is it possible to express the pain that it entails? In 1994, when she was about to fall prey to her illness, Khady Sylla met Aminta Ngom, who exhibited her madness freely, without fear of provocation. During her years of suffering, Aminta was her window to the world.

The Sun Assassinated

The poet Jean Sénac, also a radio host, chose to stay in Algeria after his country's independence in 1962. Ten years later, a protester and libertarian, he was monitored by the regime's police. His poems attract a popular audience and his show is a real success with young people. Also, when Hamid and Belkacem, two students, learn that the play they wrote and presented at the first national Algerian theater festival is downgraded under the pretext that they performed it in French, their pain will be alleviated by the presence behind the scenes by Jean Sénac who congratulates them. The latter will become close friends of the poet and witness his fight for the freedom and culture of Algerian youth. A fight which would lead Sénac to martyrdom: one night in August 1973, he was assassinated in the cellar which served as his apartment. Hamid is accused of the murder.

Nadia Coupeau, dite Nana

Victim of a rape, Nadia Coupeau decides to keep the child despite her precarious personal situation. But her child is soon taken away from her and placed in public care. Desperate, but ready to do anything to get him back, she decides to join her friend Zoé in the capital... In this version freely inspired by Emile Zola's work, Nana's trajectory is a cross-section of contemporary society, from the jungle of the suburbs to the golden world of business.

Wild Games

Once upon a time a carnivorous advertising methodist (Richard Bohringer) finds himself stuck between floors in an old elevator. The owner of the deserted building (Ute Lemper) does not help, but plays with him like a prey trapped. To get out, he threatens, attempts to seduce, to deceive, to be honest. After this confrontation for several days...

Death in Therapy

Antoine Rivière, a highly-reputed psychoanalyst, is visited by a new patient, Edouard Berg. When Berg claims to have killed his own wife, the doctor suspects he is a compulsive liar. How could he know that he has been caught in a trap and it's already too late for escape?

The Violin Player

This European drama, set in Paris, follows a brilliant musician as he suddenly forsakes his career, to live and love amongst the common populace. Armand is the violinist who yearns to experience that life and to share his music with everyone, not just the wealthy and the elite. He leaves the glittering world of classical music without a backward glance and takes up residence in the Paris metro where he is surrounded by beggars and tramps. There he meets and becomes friends with Lydia, a metro employee.

Archipel

A teenager at a predominantly male boarding school learns lessons in love when he is invited to stay at a remote estate for the holiday season.

Welcome Aboard!

A philosophizing uninvited hitchhiker terrorizes a writer, who's selling dictionaries while he's struggling with writer's block.

I Want to Go Home

Joey Wellman, an American cartoonist from Cleveland now largely forgotten at home, visits France with his partner Lena to attend an exhibition in Paris about the comic strip (bande dessinée) which features his work. He also hopes to be reconciled with his daughter Elsie who has been a student in Paris for two years, in flight from the American culture of which she sees her father as a typical example. Elsie is naively infatuated with French literature, and is trying to secure an introduction to the brilliant university professor Christian Gauthier, an expert on Flaubert but also an enthusiast for comic books. The meeting of father and daughter goes badly, but Elsie is persuaded to join Joey and Lena for the weekend at the country house of Gauthier's mother, Isabelle. During a comic-themed masquerade party, all of the characters are made to reconsider their present and past relationships.

Strange Place for an Encounter

France is a haughty, bourgeoise wife who is abandoned at the side of the road by her husband after a vicious quarrel. She meets Charles, a doctor. The meeting of the two strangers is the focus of the film, along with their encounters with characters at a truck stop.

The Abyss

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.

Widow's Walk

Molinat is assigned to the case of a man found with a bullet in his ear on the shore of a little Atlantic coast resort he knows well. Indeed, he used to live there before his wife disappeared at sea, never to be found again. As the ocean rejects a new corpse everyday, the mystery thickens and the list of potential suspects grows longer. This slows Molinat's progress as much as the cumbersome Leroyer, sent in to spy on him and hopefully impede his progress. The tension mounts and the ring involving the three young ladies in the grey mansion, the village idiot and the real estate agent starts spinning out of control.

Descent Into Hell

The marriage of the famous writer Alan and his young wife Lola is in a crisis. On a vacation in Haiti Lola wants to decide if their relationship still has a future...

Mélo

Pierre Belcroix and Marcel Blanc are violinists and lifelong friends living in Paris in the 1920s. While Marcel has become famous and Pierre has not, both are happy with their lives. Pierre is happily married to Romaine, a stylish young flapper. However, Marcel meets and falls in love with her, which Marcel little suspects.

Mint Tea

A young Algerian in Paris has not been as successful as he claims in letters home, and when his mother unexpectedly arrives for a visit of several months, he is hard put to hide his circumstances -- and the fact that he has resorted to small-time criminal activity to support himself. His mother disembarks in her traditional attire, a warm-hearted woman who does not have a clue as to how this foreign society functions but also has absolutely no inhibitions about finding out, if the need arises. As the story progresses, the mother catches on to her son's circumstances though the two are still not able to confront the deception and right it. Even with a low budget, this first-time feature-length story by Bahloul Bahloul combines satire, comedy, and pathos to bring home a relationship between mother and son that transcends life's many obstacles.

Fire on Sight

Inept policemen try to stop an amoral young duo on a spree of robbery and murder in France.

Benvenuta

A passionate affair set against the intense encounter between a film-maker and a novelist. The story begins with young scriptwriter François tracking down the author of a once-scandalous novel. His aim is to adapt the work for the screen but several elements of the novel he finds difficult to comprehend. The author, Jeanne, is initially cautious of relaying information, insisting the presumably autobiographical book in no way relates to her personal life. However, eventually she takes the man into confidence to tell the background of Benvenuta.

Beirut: The Encounter

Zeina (Nadine Acoury) is a Catholic student whose good friend Haidar (Haithem El Amine), a Muslim, has always been particularly close. After a futile attempt to get together (he gets caught in traffic), they each decide to make an audio tape trying to explain, based on their own ideas, why there continues to be fighting in Lebanon now, in 1977, and why they are against it. Zeina is about to leave for the United States and Haidar is to meet her at the airport, where they will exchange their tapes. Alas, fate intervenes because when he arrives early at the airport, he is harassed by someone looking to prey on gullible refugees and he gets so angry that he grabs a taxi out of there, throwing his tape away as he does so. When Zeina arrives and realizes he is not there, she is broken-hearted. In a strange twist at the end, the cast and the director (Borhane Alaouie) have a discussion as to whether or not the character of Haidar should kill himself.

Melancoly Baby

Olga is married to Laurent, who is devoted to his career and often leaves Olga at home alone when he travels away for work. Whilst she is rich and wants for nothing, she is terribly bored with life. When Laurent is working away she meets up with his colleague Pierre and through him meets Claude, who is unemployed and fed up of his situation. Can Olga and Claude help each other to get their lives back on track?

Woman Between Wolf and Dog

Lieve is a Belgian woman who marries just as World War II is beginning. When the Germans invade, her husband goes off to fight them, but he swiftly returns home after the invasion succeeds. Later, he decides that the Germans are on the right side of things, and goes off to fight for them on the Eastern Front. Soon afterward, a resistance fighter is stranded on her doorway, and she hides him. The two of them fall in love, and the conflicts and joys of this relationship cause Lieve continued grief well after the end of the war.

God Wills It So

A crusader gets lost with his horse in the desert and stops to die. He ponders over the recent events, the pillaging of villages, and the four women who followed them to rob whatever was left.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't

The intertwined lives of two women in 1970s France, set against the progress of the women's movement in which Agnes Varda was involved. Pomme and Suzanne meet when Pomme helps Suzanne obtain an abortion after a third pregnancy which she cannot afford. They lose contact but meet again ten years later. Pomme has become an unconventional singer, Suzanne a serious community worker - despite the contrast they remain friends and share in the various dramas of each others' lives, in the process affirming their different female identities.

The Pleasure of Love in Iran

An Iranian man and a French woman stroll around the city of Isfahan, Iran and find that their love is mirrored perfectly in the architecture and mosaics of the city's mosques.

Met Dieric Bouts

A filmed essay about the painter Bouts.

Belle

A married, middle-aged professor meets a mysterious woman in the woods and has an affair with her.