So far, this is a perfectly imaginable situation. Now imagine the man who came up with the idea gets up the next morning and starts writing a script. One of the others starts looking for funding. Five years later, a full-feature length Western, made with the help of every inhabitant of your village and the neighbouring villages, is about to hit the box office in cinemas across the country.

It sounds unbelievable, but it happened. The Flemish film “Schellebelle 1919”, in cinemas from 27 July, tells the tale about a family who struggled to survive the First World War. Coralie, a courageous sixteen-year-old girl, opens her house for no less than twenty-five war orphans. But their peaceful lives are under siege: child protection agencies want to put them away in an orphanage, while local dignitaries want to claim the land the children live on in order to build a road and a gas station.

Flanders Today set out to find the man who came up with the idea and was stubborn enough to complete it. His name is Johan Heldenbergh (pictured), one of Flanders’ most celebrated actors in both theatre and film.

Are you satisfied?

I have never worked harder for anything in my life, and it is the one thing I am most proud of. I’ve been working full-time on the film from December 2009 until July 2010. And with fulltime I mean: from 8 in the morning until two in the morning. But it was worth it.

Why did you want to make this movie?

Well, the idea was born in a bar. Jan Baeyens, a friend of mine and later art director of the movie, one night expressed his dream to dub a Western in the local dialect. That's when I said: Don't tell me this is your dream. If you have dreams, you have to make them come true. And make them true in a better way than you have dreamed them. If you do something, anything, you have to do it well. I told him that I would write the scenario. And I did.

Marnix Bontinck, another friend who works at the railway company and is also the producer of the movie, started looking for funding. Soon it turned out he was doing a really good job; there was more and more money coming in. We then decided to involve Kenneth Taylor, the mayor of Groot-Wichelen (of which Schellebelle is a part-municipality) and a director at the production company Woestijnvis. That was when we realised that we should involve the whole village in the project. Because that was the only right thing to do.

Why a Western?

That was part of the initial idea, so we went along with it. If I would write and make a new movie, it would probably not be a Western. But on the other hand, it is a genre I hold very dearly. I've seen all good Westerns, over and over again. Soon after Baeyens expressed the idea, I started thinking about all the typical Western elements I could use: the drunk sharpshooter, a shoot-out, the tall black stranger arriving in the village and helping innocent victims, the young and defenceless resisting a higher and evil power. But I didn't want cowboy hats and Indians, I wanted to make a movie set in Flanders. It had to have a plausible story. So it became a family chronicle.

As a resident of Schellebelle yourself, do you feel the making of this movie has changed the atmosphere in the village?

Absolutely. It already used to be a very nice place to live in before we started making the film. It is an open community. But now you can feel people have a much broader view, a broader view towards the village and the world in general. I believe with this movie we have proven that the world is makeable. People sometimes suffer too much from a negative attitude towards life and their surroundings. They get stuck in prejudice and become bitter. That is happening everywhere. Well, you can do something about it. That's what we have proven with this movie.

People who live here feel differently now. It means something to live in this village. It is not just a place to go back to after work anymore. Now it is a place where people have friends, where they themselves, too, have a meaning towards others.

I believe that people, more than ever before, are looking for togetherness. We have lost the feeling of being part of a community. We invest more and more time in work, we cocoon and always stay within our small families. People really need to connect again. It has happened here: people have breathed a sigh of relief. A sense of harmony, of sympathy has returned and I believe it will stay for long.

www.okafilm1919.be