A respected police commissioner has a reputation as a opera lover, but by night he also enjoys plunging into the transvestite scene. In addition, he harbors a longing for his very own sister. When he learns that his wife has been murdered, he tries to implicate the set designer who has designs on...
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...
Hector's parents sent him to an orphanage in treatment for smallpox but... they never picked him up. 35 years later, he still lives in the orphanage, surrounded by children, his playmates. Till a forgotten aunt remembers that he exists. She'll get him to participate in the bakery of her husband,...
In this light-hearted low-budget comedy, two very different Flemish tween bachelors are best buds. Peter is a responsible professional, who's excited to get his first proper account as copy-writer in a small Belgian publicity firm- for condoms, a product the conservative boss dreads as slightly...
Placide's dad tells him on his deathbed he'll haunt Placide if he doesn't find a wife soon. Placide cautiously agrees, but he only wants to settle for a very beautiful woman. That might be easier said than done, since he is a vagabond. When he accidentally enters a photo shoot, Placide meets Sarah....
A disjointed group of colleagues gets a new manager. For his ultimate plan to enhance their working attitude, he invites them to a team building weekend.
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...
Dennis Davids is a young, talented and idealistic lawyer in Antwerp, who takes every case at heart, even the pro-deo clients the court assigns for a meager fee. Needless to say he really goes the extra mile, risking his life and his career as his own private detective, in the case of Sandra Van...
Hugo Claus rewrote and directed Friday as the cinematic version of his original 1969 play of the same name. Just as in the play, the story begins with the theme of incest, as the father Georges (Frank Aendenboom) returns from serving his jail sentence for that crime. Unlike the earlier play,...
Hugues cannot get over the untimely death of his wife Blanche, who made him happy for ten years. He lives alone in his house in Bruges, a city he would like to be dead like his wife. The sorrowful widower has transformed the place he lives in into a shrine dedicated to his beloved wife. One day, he...
In this film version of the Dutch-language classic ('heimat'-)novel by Flemish author Felix Timmermans, the title character is a city-boy from Lier who after recovering from a life-threatening disease changes his life completely and his name to the self-invented Pallieter. He moves in with...
In the course of four seasons we follow the process as Maurits mourns the death of his mother. His intensely sad father, a restorer of paintings, is not able to offer him any solace. Maurits denies his mother's death and withdraws to the flood plains of the river. There he meets Moniek. During...
Sammy Raes, a nice, naive law-freshman from a simple family, dies in a form of hazing known as the 'flying carpet'. The father of the arrogant fraternity president Guy Bogaerts who ordered this reckless procedure abuses his connections to prevent a judicial homicide conviction, while the college...
Life does not go well the last couple of years for film director Serge Gabriëls. Since the day he chose his career above the woman of his life, things kept going downhill. When a bailiff was sent to declare his production company bankrupt, he lost all hope and perspective. Fortunately at that...
This historical costume drama is a mini-series on the life of Flemish first-rate Baroque painter Pieter Pauwel Rubens (1577-1640), whose artistic success throughout Europe not only made him a fortune allowing him to stock his Antwerp residence ('Rubenshuis' in Dutch) and a castle at Elewijt, in the...
