The King of Mont Ventoux

The Flanders audiovisual Fund (VAF) has confirmed support for 19 documentary film projects. The list includes new projects by successful documentary filmmakers such as Klara Van Es, who can start working on Carnotstraat 17, and Manno Lanssens, who received script support for a new doc, Victims.

Carnotstraat 17 is produced by Associate Directors and directed by Klara van Es, who previously delivered quite a performance by scoring a cinema hit with her documentary Lost Down Memory Lane. Carnotstraat 17 is up for development support. Serendipity Films-produced Victims will be director Lanssens’ third release, following the successful Epilogue and the yet-to-screen Begijnen Beginnen Vanbinnen (Beguines Begin From Within).

An unprecedented total of four projects from Flanders are selected for this year’s IDFA Forum, IDFA's international co-financing market for documentaries and Europe's largest gathering of filmmakers, television commissioning editors, and independent documentary producers.

The record-number of Forum projects is another sign of the re-found dynamism in the Flemish documentary sector. The four projects are: Fons Feyaerts’ The King of Mont Ventoux (prod: Associate Directors) is a thrilling virtual competition that puts five legendary cycling heroes in an unprecedented race beyond the boundaries of time, crossing the verge of sports.

A record-breaking haul of eleven documentaries and four docu projects from Flanders have been selected  for this year’s IDFA, the international Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (16-27 November). Works from Jeremy De Ryckere and Kristof Bilsen, who recently graduated from RITS and NFTS (UK) respectively,  are shown in the Student Documentary competition. The other entries feature in the Reflecting Images: Panorama, Paradocs section and IDFA pitching Forum.

Both Jeremy De Ryckere’s The Heir and Kristof Bilsen’s White Elephant compete for the IDFA Award for Best Student Documentary, worth €2,500. The Heir tells the story of a father, Raf, and a son, Dominique, and their relationship to their passion: horse racing, a long family tradition. White Elephant is a documentary about the Central Post Office and its employees in Kinshasa, DR Congo. This grandiose relic of a colonial past has trapped its employees in a frozen timewarp from which they are planning their escape. Last year the Award for Best Student Documentary went to the Flemish doc What’s in a Name by Eva Küpper.