Week 12/2026

As part of their focus on women directors, De Cinema in Antwerp is screening the first ever Mexican sound film made by a woman, La mujer de nadie. Adela Sequeyro not only wrote and directed the film, but she also played the main part of Anna: a young woman who flees her abusive stepfather in search for independence. Anna’s rebellious attitude is formally translated by the film’s style, which combines close-ups and unusual camera angles to highlight her agency and growing emancipation.

Based on a popular short story by the Bengali writer Tarasankar Banerji, Jalsaghar, screened at CINEMATEK, shows the downfall of Biswambhar Roy: an ageing feudal landlord in 1920s India. In his refusal to yield to the new social order, the patriarch becomes a symbol of decaying feudalism in the face of modernity. Music plays a central role in Satyajit Ray’s depiction of misplaced pride and stubbornness. Rather than just accompanying the story, concerts of Indian classical music are an integral part of the narrative.

Monokino in Ostend puts Agnès Varda and Nina de Vroome side by side in a double bill around the sea. Varda’s feature debut, La pointe courte, which some consider the first Nouvelle Vague film, combines documentary realism with a heavily stylized approach to connect the romantic struggles of a couple with the collective issues of a fishing village. The sea visually connects both storylines, forming a bridge between the private and the public spheres.

In Een idee van de zee, Nina de Vroome (editor at Sabzian) shows a boarding school at the maritime institute in Ostend, where teenagers are prepared for a professional life on and around the sea. While they learn to observe the sea and to understand its turbulent, unpredictable nature, de Vroome’s perceptive and empathetic camera invites us to observe them as they grow up and search for their place in a changing world.