Belgian cinema is perhaps best known internationally for the Dardenne brothers, whose unflinching social realism has won multiple Palme d'Or awards at Cannes. The country also has a strong tradition of dark comedy and surrealist sensibility, shaped in part by the spirit of Magritte. Have a browse through Macca's Belgian picks below.
Rating: 3.5★
Johnny Mad Dog arrives from a corner of world cinema that rarely gets much attention on mainstream screens: the co-production networks of France and Belgium that, through the 2000s, funded a number of films made on location in sub-Saharan Africa with non-professional casts and limited budgets. Released
Rating: 2.5★
There is a particular kind of prestige that arrives pre-loaded, and The Red Turtle carried more of it than most. A co-production between the French outfits Wild Bunch, Why Not Productions and CN4 Productions, the Belgian studio Belvision, and, most eye-catchingly, Japan's Studio Ghibli, the
Rating: 3.5★
There are films that arrive quietly, made on modest budgets by small studios in countries not traditionally associated with feature animation, and then somehow end up nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The Secret of Kells is precisely that kind of film. Released in 2009 and co-
Rating: 4.0★
There is a particular kind of short film that does not announce itself loudly, does not rely on spectacle or plot machinery, and simply asks you to sit with a feeling for a few minutes. Father and Daughter, made in 2000 by Dutch-British animator Michael Dudok de Wit, is
Rating: 3.5★
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot oversaw one of the twentieth century's most catastrophic acts of mass murder, killing somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million Cambodians through execution, forced labour, famine, and disease. What is often less discussed is the regime's
Rating: 2.5★
The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world. By the early 2000s, decades of Soviet-era irrigation projects had reduced it to a scattering of shallow, salt-crusted remnants surrounded by desert, leaving fishing boats stranded on dry land miles from any water. It is one
Rating: 2.5★
Cape Verde in the mid-1960s was a place caught between worlds. Still a Portuguese colonial territory (independence would not come until 1975), the archipelago was watching the old certainties crack under pressure from economic and social forces that no amount of tradition could hold back. The volcanic island of
Rating: 2.5★
Madagascar in the late 1960s and early 1970s was a place caught between two worlds. France had formally granted the island independence in 1960, yet its military presence lingered, and the communities clustered around those air bases existed in a curious bubble, half-French and half-adrift, insulated from both
Rating: 3.0★
French Guiana occupies a peculiar place in the cultural imagination: an overseas territory of France, geographically part of South America, historically shaped by the brutal legacy of the penal colony at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and today home to communities whose lives bear little resemblance to anything you might associate
Rating: 4.0★
By the mid-1960s, Formula One had grown from a specialist motorsport into a genuinely global spectacle, its calendar sweeping through Monaco, Spa, Monza, and beyond, drawing enormous crowds and an air of glamorous, sometimes fatal, theatre. The 1966 season in particular marked a major technical turning point for the
Rating: 2.5★
Reproduction has been a recurring preoccupation of science fiction, from the bleakest dystopias to gentler satirical fables, and it is not hard to see why. Few subjects carry more political, philosophical, and emotional weight, and few lend themselves so readily to the kind of "what if" speculation that
Rating: 3.0★
Animation from outside the Hollywood and major European studio circuits has had something of a quiet renaissance over the past decade or so, with films like Josep and No Dogs or Italians Allowed demonstrating that hand-crafted, personal animation can carry real emotional weight without the backing of a nine-
Film images and data courtesy of TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
The best new reviews, a buried gem with where to watch it, and where the every-country challenge is up to. Free, no spam.
Subscribe free