It’s about to be bloody spectacular.
In the month of May, sink your teeth into a programme designed to keep your blood pumping. From vampiric masterpieces to Georgian documentaries, cinéconcerts, female body horror and Michael Jackson dancing in space, we’ve got a new surprise for you every week!
We start off strong with Park Chan-wook’s OLDBOY, and transfer from those Korean thrills back to Belgium for a double bill of Laura Wandel’s work: UN MONDE and her newest film, L’INTÉRÊT D’ADAM. Then, settle in for back-to-back Georgian excellence with BLUEBERRY DREAMS and HOLY ELECTRICITY, and enjoy all that Mriya International Film Festival has to offer with 3,000KM BY BIKE, THE KARTLI KINGDOM and BIRDS AND BEASTS.
The week after, Sabzian stops by for an evening centered around Marcel Hanoun and his film UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE. The Cinéclub treats us to another Georgian classic with BEGINNING, then ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, AFTERSUN and STAND BY ME, and we host curator Max Ferguson for a closer look at the passage from girlhood to adulthood in the short film programme HOSPITABLE BODY.
We screen a brand new Camus adaptation, L’ÉTRANGER, at the behest of retiring colleague professor Mia Vaerman, and close out with a Lebanese-Palestinian Cinéconcert set to Diana Allan’s PARTITION, curated by Cindy Chehab. Then on our final day of May, a vampiric double bill with Werner Herzog’s NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE at 7pm, followed by Taika Waititi’s classic WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS at 9pm.
See you in the cinema!
L’étranger (2025) – François Ozon | Tuesday, May 26th | OV st NL | 19.00
🎓 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕋𝕖𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕖𝕣'𝕤 ℂ𝕙𝕠𝕚𝕔𝕖 - 𝕄𝕚𝕒 𝕍𝕒𝕖𝕣𝕞𝕒𝕟
A year after “When Autumn Comes”, François Ozon directs the adaptation of Albert Camus’s famous novel, «The Stranger». In sensual, luminous black and white, he retraces the journey of Meursault, a silent, nihilistic antihero whose apparent lack of emotion deeply challenges our moral conscience.
Algiers, 1938. Meursault, a young man in his thirties and a modest office worker, buries his mother without showing the slightest emotion. The next day, he begins an affair with Marie, a coworker. Then he returns to his everyday life. But his neighbor, Raymond Sintès, disrupts his routine by dragging him into shady dealings, culminating in a tragedy on a beach, under a blazing sun…
A novel of great philosophical depth, «The Stranger» has a reputation for being unadaptable. Yet François Ozon, one of the most prolific filmmakers in French cinema, manages to transcend the book’s legacy in a film as unsettling as it is enigmatic.
By opening the film with archival television footage from the 1940s depicting the city of Algiers under French occupation, Ozon establishes the context of the story while immediately adding a postcolonial perspective—a significant additional layer that is absolutely necessary today to address Meursault’s original crime: having killed an Arab. Rarely questioned at the time, the racist dimension of the murder finds a new resonance here, without diverting the film from its central focus: the detachment.
PLEASE NOTE: The film is shown in its original French with Dutch subtitles (no English).
Stand by Me (1986) – Rob Reiner | Wednesday, May 20th | OV st FR | 19.00
🌟 𝑨 𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒃𝒚 𝑪𝒊𝒏é𝒄𝒍𝒖𝒃 𝑹𝑰𝑻𝑪𝑺
Based on the Stephen King short story The Body, Rob Reiner’s easygoing nostalgia piece is set in Castle Rock, OR, over Labor Day weekend, 1959.
A quartet of boys, inseparable friends all, set out in search of a dead body that one of the boys overhears his brother talking about. The foursome consists of intellectual Gordie (Wil Wheaton), born leader Chris (River Phoenix), emotionally disturbed Teddy (Corey Feldman), and chubby hanger-on Vern (Jerry O’Connell).
The boys’ adventures en route to the elusive body are colored by the personal pressures brought to bear on all of them by the adult world. Richard Dreyfuss, playing the grown-up Gordie, narrates the film, while Kiefer Sutherland dominates every scene he’s in as a brutish high-school bully.
Aftersun (2022) – Charlotte Wells | Tuesday, May 19th | OV st NL-FR | 19.00
🌟 𝑨 𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒃𝒚 𝑪𝒊𝒏é𝒄𝒍𝒖𝒃 𝑹𝑰𝑻𝑪𝑺
Young teenager Sophie and her 30-year-old father Calum go on vacation to a Turkish resort where they swim, play pool, sunbathe and lounge. While a new world opens up for the budding adolescent, Calum struggles with the heaviness of life out of Sophie’s sight.
Twenty years later, Sophie’s tender memories of this vacation form a powerful and heartbreaking portrait of their relationship, as she tries to understand the dark side of her loving father.
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) – Jim Jarmusch | Monday, May 18th | OV st FR | 19.00
🌟 𝑨 𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒃𝒚 𝑪𝒊𝒏é𝒄𝒍𝒖𝒃 𝑹𝑰𝑻𝑪𝑺
Tilda Swinton. Tom Hiddleston. Jim Jarmusch. Vampires. Need we say more?
ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2013) follows Adam and Eve, two centuries-old vampire lovers, as they navigate their melancholic existence in the decaying worlds of Detroit and Tangier.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch (PATERSON, DEAD MAN, etc), the film is a moody, poetic meditation on art, immortality, and the passage of time. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston deliver mesmerizing performances as the intellectual, world-weary couple, their chemistry radiating both passion and sorrow.
The film’s lush cinematography and ethereal soundtrack create a hauntingly beautiful atmosphere, blending gothic romance with a modern sensibility. With its dark humor and introspective tone, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE redefines the vampire genre as a tender exploration of human (and inhuman) connection.
Beginning (2020) – Déa Kulumbegashvili | Wednesday, May 13th | OV-EN | 19.00
🌟 𝑨 𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒃𝒚 𝑪𝒊𝒏é𝒄𝒍𝒖𝒃 𝑹𝑰𝑻𝑪𝑺
In her striking feature debut, Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili uses rigorous, compositionally complex frames to tell the devastating story of a persecuted family of Jehovah’s Witness missionaries from the perspective of a wife and mother.
Following a shocking act of arson on the place of worship she and her husband have established in a remote village outside of Tbilisi, Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili) finds herself descending into a spiral of confusion and doubt, her suffering only exacerbated by her debased treatment at the hands of the local police.
An occasionally harrowing depiction of women’s roles in both religious and secular society, Beginning announces a major new arrival on the world cinema scene.
The Lost Boys (1987) – Joel Schumacher | Tuesday, May 12th | OV-EN st FR | 19.00
A sun-drenched California town hides a dark secret in The Lost Boys, where vampires lurk beneath the vibrant surf culture.
Joel Schumacher’s stylish direction fuses edgy humor, eerie suspense, and gothic flair, creating a cinematic experience that feels both timeless and unmistakably ‘80s.
Two brothers find themselves caught between teenage rebellion and a chilling supernatural menace, with Kiefer Sutherland delivering an unforgettable performance as the gang’s leader. The film’s moody soundtrack and striking visuals amplify its rebellious, rock-and-roll spirit. Decades later, The Lost Boys remains a cult favorite, beloved for its blend of horror, humor, and youthful defiance.
Une simple histoire (1959) – Marcel Hanoun | Monday, May 11th | OV-EN | 19.00
This first film by Marcel Hanoun, a genuine filmmaker whose work remains unjustly overlooked, is at once precise, cruel, and moving, the neorealist chronicle of a woman who migrates from the provinces to Paris in search of work.
Film will be introduced with a lecture by @sabzian.be and filmmaker Bert Beyens, who worked with Hanoun personally. Bert Beyens is also screening his short film "À la rencontre de Marcel Hanoun" about his working relationship with the late, great director.
Holy Electricity (2024) – Tato Kotetishvili | Wednesday, May 6th | OV-EN | 21.00
Two cousins discover abandoned crosses in a Tbilisi scrapyard and transform them into neon art, leading to unexpected friendships as they sell their creations door-to-door across the Georgian capital.
Just like the cousins transform rusty iron crosses into beautiful, neon-lit trinkets, Georgian director Tato Kotetishvili uses his stylish fable Holy Electricity to transform the city of Tbilisi into a magical space that comes alive through fantastical and absurd vignettes.
When life gives you a suitcase full of iron crosses, you polish them up and sell them as neon-bright commodities to the gullible co-dwellers of your city. At least, that’s what Gonga and his cousin Bart do in this vibrant debut feature by Georgian director Tato Kotetishvili. The duo’s quest to turn scrap into gold becomes the loose narrative structure of this stylish film, which opts for a vibe-based approach to the inner city of Tbilisi.
Holy Electricity shines in its playful depiction of its surroundings, celebrating a multi-layered city inhabited by a myriad of eccentric characters. The dreamy electronic music, strikingly composed cinematography and occasional streaks of the absurd only reinforce the idea that Holy Electricity is an ode to the power of transformation. Just like the neon-illuminated crosses, this endearing film chooses to make everything in life a bit prettier, to show the brightest and sweetest version of a metropol that is often grimly depicted in more austere movies. Kotetishvili takes Tbilisi’s reality and turns it into a remarkable fable. By doing so, Holy Electricity seems to say that even the most ordinary slice of life has the potential to become fantastical.
Blueberry Dreams (2024) – Elene Mikaberidze | Wednesday, May 6th | OV-EN | 19.00
Led by the good-hearted father Soso, a family of four starts a blueberry farm to secure their future together. But with a home in northern Georgia, their village is close to the troubled border with the Russian-backed region of Abkhazia, where new conflicts have been rumbling for 30 years.
Soso is a retired engineer, but together with his wife Nino and their sons Giorgi and Lazare, he throws himself into the ‘Plant the Future’ programme set up by the Georgian authorities to stabilize the area. Nino is haunted by memories of the war and dreams of her children experiencing the world, while Soso wants to maintain their connection to the land. But Giorgi and Lazare long for a different future, immersing themselves in anime and dreaming of visiting Japan.
In the midst of their daily lives, the family navigates between hardship, joy and contemplation of a different future.
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
“Born in Tbilisi to a Georgian dad and an Abkhazian mom, my life’s tied to the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. War pushed me to Belgium
at age five, growing up affected by its aftermath. Returning to Georgia took 22 years, but as a Georgian citizen, I couldn’t enter Abkhazia. Still, family ties allowed three visits, shaping my film.
Decades after the war, Abkhazia shows scars, influenced by Russian propaganda with an uncertain future. Borders divide communities, causing identity issues without recognized passports. Rediscovering my Abkhazian roots, I watched my cousins grow up, grappling with identity. This inspired me to explore how conflict affects Georgian kids. Unable to cross into Abkhazia due to Covid-19, I met a family near the administrative border.
Documenting their lives, Father Soso, mother Nino, and the brothers Giorgi and Lazare face daily challenges in a nation stuck in conflicts. Through this family’s journey of cultivating a blueberry field in this uncertain land, I found answers to my questions. Their story reflects the impact of war and the hope needed for a better future.” – Elene Mikaberidze
Double Bill: Un Monde + L'Intérêt d'Adam | Tuesday, May 5th | OV-EN | 19.00 & 21.00
It is our pleasure and honor to host Belgian film director Laura Wandel next week for a screening of her two feature films, UN MONDE (Playground) and L'INTÉRÊT D'ADAM (Adam's Sake). If you have any burning questions for Laura, make sure you don't miss this very special evening!
Oldboy (2003) – Park Chan-wook | Monday, May 4th | OV-EN | 19.00
Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy is a brutal, hypnotic tale of revenge and redemption. After being imprisoned for 15 years without explanation, Oh Dae-su is suddenly released and given five days to uncover the truth. His journey spirals into a labyrinth of violence, shocking twists, and psychological torment.
With masterful cinematography, a haunting score, and one of the most unforgettable fight scenes in cinema history, Oldboy is a visceral experience that lingers long after the credits roll. A modern classic of South Korean cinema, it remains as bold and unsettling as ever.
