Members of the cast of two brand new Flemish films, Meisjes (Girls) and My Queen Karo, will both be in attendance, as will the two stars of the French film Un Prophète, which won the Grand Jury Prize this year at Cannes.
Meisjes is director Geoffrey Enthoven's second foray into the world of the geriatric: his Vidange perdue (known in English as The Only One), starring the late Nand Buyl as a less-than-pleasant old man, was a big hit across Flanders. The new comedy also has all the qualities to hit the right note in Flanders: co-written by Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem (whose Aanrijding in Moscou just took home its 15th international award), it's about a 70-year-old woman who wants to revive the singing career of her youth. She recruits her music producer son to help her, who, according to the film's promotional materials, "would rather jump into the River Scheldt". Both Marilou Mermans (the mother) and Jan Van Looveren (the son) will introduce the film at the festival.
Expect even more excitement - and possibly a little swooning - over the presence of rising Flemish star Matthias Schoenaerts, recently seen on the big screen in Loft and Linkeroever and on TV in De Smaak van de Keyser. Cuter than cute, he'll be joined in Ostend by his My Queen Karo co-stars Anna Franziska Jäger and Déborah François. The film, which follows the difficult life of a 10-year-old girl living with her free-thinking parents in a 1970s Amsterdam commune, enjoys its world premiere at the festival before screening at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. It opens in Belgium in October.
Actors Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim travel to Ostend, meanwhile, to introduce Un Prophète, a universally hailed film by Jacques Audiard about a young French-Arab criminal who turns out to be a lot smarter than his fellow inmates bargained on when he first arrives in prison.
Joining in the celebrity fray are Karel Roden and Deana Jakubiskovà, who star in the Slovakian film Bathory, which has its Benelux premiere at the festival. About the historical figure accused of vampirism, it's Slovakia's most financially successful film to date.
The festival also hosts a Gaming Development Day, in-cinema gaming and a free public City Games event, plus several award-winning television series on the big screen. Flemish musician Maurice Engelen, aka Praga Khan, is the guest programmer this year, and he has laid on some fabulously salacious programming: Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion and Michael Haneke's La Pianiste are all on his list.
19-25 August
Ciné Rialto and Kinepolis Ostend
Flanders Today is a 
11°C / 26°C
