Week 19/2025

Few documentary filmmakers are as conscious about their filmmaking as Nicolas Philibert. Rather than applying a preconceived method to his films, he lets the interaction with his subject dictate his approach to filmmaking, adapting it to their needs with great attention and care. For Philibert, each film is a reflection on the ethical and aesthetic conditions of filming people, whether they are school children, deaf people or, as in Sur l’Adamant, the patients and caregivers in a psychiatric center in Paris. The screening at De Cinema in Antwerp will be introduced by Linda De Zitter, clinical psychologist at L’Adamant and closely involved in the making of the documentary.

Like Philibert, Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo is wary of any prefigured ideas when embarking on a new project, letting the dynamics on set determine what the film should look like instead. Tale of Cinema is perhaps the perfect introduction to his oeuvre which, considering its sheer size, can seem daunting to get into. With its mise-en-abyme story about two people reenacting a film within the film, Tale of Cinema is a crystal in which all of Hong’s other films are reflected, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi argues. The screening, which is part of an extensive retrospective at Bozar, will be introduced by writer and film curator Dennis Lim.

“A beautiful summer fruit with a worm inside,” is how Agnès Varda described her third feature film, Le bonheur. Told in bright yellow tones, the morally ambiguous story about a perfect marriage that begins to crumble when the husband starts an affair unveils an array of societal norms surrounding family, love and happiness. Borrowing its cliché aesthetic from the glossy, sun-drenched pictures of families in magazines and advertising campaigns, Varda’s societal criticism takes shape through the very forms it criticizes.