It is no wonder Belgian cinema has risen internationally in recent years. Cinema is, after all, a language, and Belgian filmmakers come from a country built on the need to understand language as a bridge—between its regions, its people, and its idioms. The country has three official languages—Dutch, French and German—and is divided both regionally and culturally into three highly autonomous regions: Flanders, in the north; Wallonia, in the south; and the Brussels-Capital Region, right in the middle.
The Walloon region has experienced a great year in cinema, set to be crowned by the world premiere of Michaël R. Roskam’s “Le Faux Soir” at the Toronto International Film Festival—with the film then heading to San Sebastián in a prominent slot as the festival’s closing gala. The latest by the renowned “Bullhead” director chronicles the real-life story of how the Belgian resistance pulled off an almost unfathomable feat: at the height of the Nazi occupation of the country in 1943, a resistance group organized a fake edition of Le Soir, the country’s largest newspaper, appropriated by the Germans as a propaganda machine.
The film marks a homecoming for Roskam after working on Hollywood projects over the last few years. The director says the film led him to reflect how Belgians are often “too modest about their own history.” “There is something deeply Belgian in its combination of courage, restraint, pacifism and humor: an ability to resist without losing a certain sense of irony or self-awareness,” continued the director. It has given me a renewed sense of pride in where I come from.” It is extra special to have such a high-profile Toronto this year, given that 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Wallonie-Bruxelles Images (WBImages), the agency for the international promotion of film and audiovisual works from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
Speaking with Variety from a busy Venice, where the agency presented Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni’s “Diane in the Loop,” WBImages director Hervé Le Phuez says his team can feel “genuinely proud of the work accomplished” by the agency in the last four decades. Ronni Shalev, whose short film “2:Love” is also world premiering in Toronto, adds to this line of thought from an immigrant perspective. In animation, this often translates to longer and more expensive productions, but I felt that I was being encouraged.” Shalev believes this creative freedom and encouragement ties “into a larger Walloon ethic of a do-it-yourself and can-do-istic approach to art.” “People tend to decide on a project here, however grandiose, and figure out how to make it happen as they go along.
I think that this approach lends a hand to having very unique and idiosyncratic voices in cinema—both on a narrative and a visual level.” Sameh Alaa and Robin Vouters’s short film “The Day I Smoked a Cigarette With My Father” is also world premiering at TIFF, and producer Delphine Duez of Belgium’s White Boat Pictures mirrors Shalev’s thoughts. They are taking risks, blending genres, working with materiality, the body and the intimate, and inventing their own cinematic languages.” Looking at the crop of films coming out of Wallonia and Belgium more widely, Roskam says it is “encouraging” to see the “range of voices currently at work.” “New generations are emerging, while established filmmakers continue to make ambitious work. The number and diversity of films being developed across the country is impressive.” “Many completely independent films are made and create a strong feeling of possibility,” Shalev adds.
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