Ruben Desiere

In the back room of a flower shop, Tomi, Rasto and Mižu are digging a tunnel in order to break into the safe of the National Bank. After heavy rainfall, the underground maze gets submerged by water and they are forced to stop working.

After graduation, Billie and Lucas are faced with big decisions: move in together as a couple or rather share a flat with friends? Full of affection for each other and curiosity about what’s to come, they feel their way forward, together and individually.

A poetic essay film on the colonial gaze and the magic lantern. This early type of image projector was used in Belgian colonial propaganda, showcasing the good works of the Church, State and industry. Lantern projections were an effective way of selling the colonial project to a somewhat reluctant Belgian public.

While dancing, bees tell each other stories about the world around them. People also claim a role in those stories, sometimes very close and intimate, sometimes distant and on an industrial scale. Nina de Vroome's thoughts also swarm with the bees: from the smallest cell in a honeycomb to the global economy, her essayistic nature documentary Globes charts the bond between humans and bees. As accomplished storytellers, they both give shape to their lives under the sun.

Some kids in Brussels play a game based upon objects that were brought back from the Congo and which were used during the Hutereau expedition.

Up until November 2013, the Gesu convent in Brussels was home to around 250 people including a number of Roma families originating from Slovakia. Over the months leading up to their impending eviction, Ruben Desiere worked with a number of the inhabitans to create a film. Kosmos is loosely based on the book of the same name by the Polish author Witold Gombrowicz. It focuses on the family of Kevin Mroc who had been living at Gesu for three years, and also features two newcomers, Mizu Balasz en Rastjo Vano.

Over the course of eight years, the film draws an intimate portrait of Jean Ciesielski, a teenager growing up in Antwerp. Moving through a succession of schools and educational tracks, Jean searches for a place within a system that has defined him from a young age. At twelve years old, he speaks about his situation with a striking maturity and clarity. As he gets older, Jean feels an increasing urgency for change. Unable to obtain a regular secondary school diploma within his current track, he decides to change schools once more. His journey reveals how strongly the language and expectations of education have shaped the way he sees himself and his place in society.

The wanderings of a retail trader, Jean-Simon, sketch the contours of a microcosmic informal economy in Congolese society. The financial urgency of everyday life is permeated by the political situation in Congo: a larger, more abstract urgency, which the diaspora experiences from a distance. The film finds itself somewhere in between these two imperatives, between here and somewhere else, the past and the present, small money and big money.