L'Ecole des Pickpockets

Spectres, a documentary film essay , recalls one of the darkest chapters in the decolonisation of the Belgian Congo: the events which lead to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo‘s first democratically elected prime minister. The film is constructed in the form of a voyage with main character Jacques Brassinne de La Buissière, a former high-ranking civil servant and protagonist in the political and humanitarian ‚thriller‘ that unfurled after the hasty decolonisation decision. He acts simultaneously as guide, commentator and symbolic figure, and we follow him through many crucial historical sites and symbolical moments. In the course of these peregrinations, questions arise about the manifest and hidden motivations behind the historic events of a still largely unresolved past, issues that continue to haunt past and present.

Based on the play of the same name by the Belgian director Alain Platel on Les Ballets C. de la B.

Hassan Al Balawi, a Palestinian diplomat, returns to his homeland on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat. Filmed in 2019, Al Balawi’s journey from the occupied West Bank to the border of Gaza draws a subjective image of what has become of the Palestinian liberation struggle, foreshadowing the events that would unfold on October 7, 2023.