Actor: Antje De Boeck

Priest Daens

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

Walhalla

Grocer De Feyter is put out of business by competition from a supermarket run by the Moroccan Saïd. To keep afloat, he does the dirty work for a right-wing politician. This man is in cahoots with a project developer who wants to build a furniture superstore in the slum area. With the aid of criminals, they manage to bring racial tension in the area to boiling point. Against this background, affection blossoms between the daughter of the grocer and the son of Saïd, a real Romeo and Juliet. Then a group of skinheads decides to put an end to the fragile romance with violence.

Cool Abdoul

The story of Ismail Abdoul, a promising young boxer getting caught between his sporting carreer and his rising fame in the criminal underworld.

Manneken Pis

An orphan comes to the big city of Brussels to find love.

Clouds: Letters to My Son

Marion Hänsel directed this personal meditation on the joys and responsibilities of parenthood, in which a narrator reads Hansel's philosophic musings on raising her young son on her own, while carefully shot and selected footage of different cloud formations from around the world provide a striking visual backdrop. Catherine Deneuve read Hänsel's text in the original French-language version of Nuages; Charlotte Rampling did the honors for the English-language print, while Barbara Auer, Carmen Maura, and Antje De Boeck respectively lent their voices to the German, Spanish, and Dutch editions of the film.