VRT

After losing his drug empire, Ferry Bouman has found a measure of peace away from Brabant's criminal underworld — until his past catches up to him.

In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup.

Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (currently Zambia), September 18, 1961. Swedish economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the UN, dies mysteriously in a plane crash. Decades later, Danish journalist and filmmaker Mads Brügger and Swedish researcher Göran Björkdahl investigate the case in search of definitive closure.

Nine-year-old Karo grows up with her parents in an Amsterdam commune in the Seventies. She leads a carefree existence in this utopia-for-adults. Everything is shared in the squat, but not everyone is able to honor these ideals. Karo gets confused because of the internal conflicts that start to divide the group. Karo slowly realizes that nothing can stay the same forever.

Ludovic, a 12-year-old boy from a well-off home who is neglected by his parents, who are part of the art scene, falls head over heels in love with Sofie, the daughter of a piano teacher, when he has to pass a test of courage in the schoolyard during recess. The cheeky girl with the two pigtails likes the boy who is interested in her. They soon get closer and meet in secret places in the city. It is the first love for both of them. Shortly after Sofie's father catches the two lovers naked in bed together in Sofie's room, Ludovic is sent away from Brussels to spend time with his grandparents. But Sofie can't stand it without Ludovic and runs away from home to be with him. The lovers hide in abandoned buildings on the Belgian coast. While parents and police search for the couple, both youngsters find that it is pretty hard to be on their own, especially since an ominous photographer is lurking around the children.

The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of the mail clerk and beer salesman with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgian overlords. Lumumba emerges here as the heroic sacrificial lamb dubiously portrayed by the international media and led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in Belgium, the United States, the international community, and Lumumba's own administration; a true story of political intrigue and murder where political entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest for economic and political hegemony.

In Brussels, Belgium, the Royal Museum of Central Africa is undertaking a radical renovation, both physical and ethical, to show with sincerity, crudeness and open-mindedness the reality of the atrocities perpetrated against the inhabitants of the Belgian colonies in Africa, still haunted and traumatized by the ghost of King Leopold II of Belgium, a racist and genocidal tyrant.

Jean is a family man and factory worker who dreams of becoming a songwriter. Pinning his hopes on his teenage daughter, Marva, he takes her to singing contests in which the awkward and overweight girl struggles to belt out a tune. When Jean is suddenly fired because of cut backs, he is ashamed and even more desperate to have his daughter succeed. In a chance meeting Jean kidnaps the most famous pop star in the country and holds her hostage demanding to be heard by the music industry. Catching the attention of the media and the eyes of the nation, Jean and Marva realize that the show must go on until everyone is famous.

Between 1942 and 1944 some 24,916 Jews were deported from Belgium to Auschwitz. The roundups and deportations were organized and carried out by the Nazis with the - not always conscious - cooperation of Belgian authorities. The attitude of the authorities here varied from outright resistance to voluntary or unwitting collaboration.

In the Andes, a Belgian doctor and his photojournalist wife become ensnared in a native tribe's struggle with a mining company.

Winston Churchill, one of the most revered men of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler, one of the most hated leaders in contemporary history. Between 1940 and 1945, these two enormously contradictory personalities faced each other in both politics and war. A clash of giants whose story begins in the trenches of the World War I and ends with the debacle of the World War II.

The Amazon flows lazily through the goldmine-gashed landscape of northern Peru. Using real eyewitness accounts, directors Bénédicte Liénard and Mary Jiménez tell the story of a young woman who winds up in the clutches of forced prostitution when her initially hopeful attempt to escape the constrictions of her village goes wrong. Step by step, she is robbed of her moral and physical integrity. The film reconstitutes a space of dignity and returns voice and identity to a fate formally made nameless. With its powerful imagery, the girl’s traumatic odyssey embodies the destruction of life in a capitalist world in connection with horrific natural devastation.

In this Stephen King-like movie about good versus evil, Lien, Sien and Fien Kriegel, unseparable eleven-year-old triplets, set fire to their school. The sisters get arrested and are put away in an institution. Not a regular reformatory but... a paradise. So much better than home. Until the sisters discover that the doctor who runs the places takes away organs and sells them to the highest bidder. Until they find out they're next on his list...

It has been 20 years since The Island was unleashed on Flanders. After all these years, fans of the series are rewarded with an exclusive reunion special, in which thirteen original cast members and the creators reunite for a unique look back.

Marius and Kitty have been living in Italy for some time now, where they managed to get their hands on a vineyard in Tuscany. Marius has improved his life, so Hugo leaves in good spirits to drop off his daughter Suus with best friend Chrissie for a long-awaited reunion. But something is wrong with the purchase of the vineyard.

Nelly and Nadine meet in Ravensbrück concentration camp. They spend the rest of their lives together. Decades later, Nelly’s granddaughter goes in search of clues. A poignant film about a love story and the need for individual and collective remembrance.

This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.

Recording of a performance by Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris of the ballet on Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich, choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

For more than a decade, wildfires of unprecedented force have been devouring our lives, homes and forests at a steady pace. Each year, 350 million hectares of forest go up in smoke, the equivalent of six times the size of France. In the US, the fire season now lasts up to two months longer than a generation ago, and the surface burnt annually has multiplied by three. This film sets out on a gripping journey of investigation from Europe to the US, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia to follow the work of a global team of dedicated firefighters, scientists and fire experts as they investigate why our forests are going up in flames, and act on an unexpected discovery: if we want to save our forests, homes, health and our climate, we need to radically change our attitude towards fire and the way we fight wildfires.