© Delphine Blast

Once a cop, Olivier Norek has, in the space of just ten years, become an undisputed master of the thriller, with a nervous and compelling style of writing. In addition to his Victor Coste series, Norek has not hesitated to tackle more sensitive issues, such as migrants in Calais (ENTRE DEUX MONDES) or ecoterrorism with IMPACT, now adapted into a comic book! In terms of adaptations, he’s not to be outdone either, with SURFACE now the subject of a series on France Télévisions, while his latest novel, LES GUERRIERS DE L’HIVER, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt. In short, an extraordinary talent who has no reason whatsoever to regret his career change!

© Cécile Quantum

After gaining a master’s degree in translation, he began writing. In just a few years’ time, he has established himself as a leading author. His first novel, “Claustrations” won the Prix Mot Passant. In 2019, he published “Anamnèse”, a psychological thriller that was shortlisted for the Prix Découverte de Noir Charbon. In 2022, he launched a collection for children, Mystère en Belgique, the first volume of which won Noir Charbon’s Prix Galibot. His latest novel, “Désobéissance”, published in 2023, won the Prix Club de l’auteur belge 2023 (Thrillers category) and the Prix Lumière des Mines Noires 2024. He is now a rising star on the Belgian thriller scene.

Pascale Bourgaux is a writer, director and reporter, who is active mostly in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan. For ten years she followed Mamour Hasan, a Pashtun leader, in his fight against the Taliban. This has resulted in a movie (LES LARMES DU SEIGNEUR AFGHAN) in 2011, and a graphic novel of the same name in 2014. Her last movie, HAWAR, NOS ENFANTS BANNIS is the result of eight years of shooting and investigating inside Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan.

Nicole is a Dutch filmmaker living in Gent, who is passionate about genre cinema. She focuses her work on short films and is currently working as a film director, screenwriter, creative director and editor. Her latest short film, POPPY’S SATURN (2023), was shown at many film festivals, including the BIFFF 2024! In fact, it even won the grand prize of the Belgium short films competition. This year, Nicole Tegelaar is coming to the BIFFF as a jury member for the White Raven competition.

Lisa Willame is a director of photography for short films, music videos, advertisements, but not just that! She graduated from the ESEC in Paris and from the INAS in Brussels. She also directs movies, is a cinematographer for documentaries, shoots and edits advertisements. She has worked on many movies and projects since 2011, for example SWITCH and OUROBOROS which were shown at the BIFFF in 2019 and 2020 respectively. SWITCH won an award. Currently, we were able to see her work as a cinematographer on SILENCED (2021), WANT (2021), LA DETENTE (2021) and ABOUT HUMANS (2021). In 2024, she was the director of photography for her first feature length movie, AMAL, which was nominated for the Magrittes 2025.

Catherine Cosme is a director, artistic director and set designer. She graduated in set designing from La Cambre in Brussels, and has worked with Serge AImé, Coulibaly, Maia Sandoz and La Cambre SHOW. While watching other directors working with actors, she developed a desire to make her own movies. In 2015, she created her first film LES AMOUREUSES. In 2019, she created her first short film FAMILLE which was selected at many festivals in Belgium as well as abroad. In 2020, she was awarded the Magritte for the best artistic direction for LOLA VERS LA MER. Her most recent work can be seen in LA NUIT SE TRAÎNE (2024).

Florence Saâdi is a Belgian producer best known for Karim Ouelhaj’s MEGALOMANIAC (2022), inspired by the Mons Butcher case, which blew us away at BIFFF 2022. With her company OKAYSS, Florence is particularly active in the genre film industry, focusing specifically on films that question society socially or politically, always with a singular artistic vision. This year, we’re honered she’s part of the Méliès Jury for the 43rd edition of our festival.

After being an actress and studying audiovisual production, Chloé turned to screenwriting. She joined the EN FAMILLE series for the French TV channel M6 before coming to Belgium and joining the ENNEMI PUBLIC team for seasons 2 and 3. She adapted MATCH, and in recent years, she has worked on series such as WARNING by Vincent Lannoo, ETHERNEL by Romain Renard and 8H10 by Myriam Leroy. She also works in France, where she co-wrote an episode for the MLLE HOLMES series on French TV channel TF1. Since August 2023, she has been writing for the series CHASSEURS DE TERRORISTES, created by Mathieu Mortelmans, and adapted from the eponymous book.

© Beata Szparagowska

Sylvain Daï is a Belgian actor, stage director and screenwriter who was born in Liège on August 26th,1980. After studying at the Liège Conservatoire as well as art history, he began directing and writing, alongside acting. In 2012 he co-founded the multidisciplinary collective UBIK Group, with which he created three shows as well as several projects that hover between theatre and installation. Since 2017 he has also been writing screenplays for cinema and television, for which he co-wrote the series Baraki.

© Clotilde Colson

Sylvestre Vannoorenberghe is a Belgian director and cinematographer. Although he started his cinema studies as a director, he preferred working with images and changed his field of study. He is best known for the television mini-series JACKY AND LINDSAY, as well as the feature films FILS DE PLOUC and LA NUIT SE TRAINE.
Sylvestre Vannoorenberghe stands out for the use of texture in his film images.

Adrien Léonard is a Belgian screenwriter and director, whose short film SOLEIL NOIR was shown at the 2019 BIFFF. It won the SABAM award. He is the organiser of a film festival called Young Filmmakers Festival of Brussels. This festival brings student and independent short films onto the big screen, encourages meetings between students and technicians, and generally serves as a springboard for young filmmakers.

This year we’re delighted to welcome Bruno Coppens, a Belgian comedian born in Tournai. This crazy juggler of words has blazed a unique trail in Belgian comedy, becoming the uttermost Francophonissime of Belgian comedians. He has played and continues to play in Montreal, Avignon, Bucharest, Dakar and Kinshasa. On the radio (columnist on La 1ère, BelRtL, RTS la 1ère (in Switzerland), France inter (le Fou du Roi) and on TV, he was Mr Virgule in ‘Ici-Bla-Bla’ (RTBF). He was also the Lion in ‘Carnaval des Animaux’, directed by Luc Petit, and is currently touring with his one-man show ‘Ma 9e Symfolie’.

© Colin Rapaille

Samuël Tubez has been fascinated by genre cinema since childhood and has always sought for excitement and wonder on the silver screen. He is programmer and coordinator of the Plaza Arthouse Cinema in Mons. For 8 years, Samuel wrote the film column for the “Service compris” program on local television Télé-MB in Mons. He also worked closely with the website and magazine CinemaFantastique, before joining the editorial staff of the tech, web and video games news website Geeko (specializing in cinema) for almost two years. An inveterate genre enthusiast, he has been attending BIFFF since the late 1990s and continues to share his love of fantastic cinema through his programming.

Brought up with TV heroines that are as eccentric as they are cult, Samantha at a very early age developed an all-consuming passion for cinema and TV series. But her discovery of an alternative and international cinema was due to the programs of our ‘Movieman’’: Sélim Sasson. They present her with an open window to the world… which makes a big change from her home in the Ardennes forest. After studying journalism at ULB, Samantha worked with various media, covering the BIFFF in the early 2000s. Currently a member of the UCC, she writes for Cinemaniacs.be, and runs her own website, Le Parfum des Mandarines, which is dedicated to current affairs, and the Korean cinema.

After studying communications at the prestigious EFAP school (Ecole française des attachés de presse), he organised a number of events in various Belgian nightclubs, and worked for the distributor Belga Films. Jean-Jacques has furthermore worked as a cultural and film journalist for various print, radio and web media such as 7 Extra, radio Vibration, Fun radio Belgique, Out Soon, Move-X, The Ticket, Extrazone, Netevents, and Cinénews… Presently, he continues to be a loyal contributor to the media outlet Campus Mag, with which he has been associated for over 20 years. He edits the pages that are dedicated to cinema, nightlife and holidays for young people. Since 2018, he has also been a member of the UCC (Union de la critique de cinéma).

This die-hard fan has been a BIFFF regular since the 2nd edition. He’s crazy enough to spend his holidays each year at the festival. He’s a member of our short film jury and responsible for the smooth progress of the Audience Award. His name is Alain Galand, but everybody knows him as Tom Pouce.

Sarah has been working in the film industry for over 10 years. After studying Visual Arts at the ESA Saint-Luc in Brussels, she started out in distribution and broadcasting, working for the independent VOD platform Sooner (formerly UniversCiné & Uncut), then for the Brussels Short Film Festival and the Brussels International Film Festival. In 2023, she joined the CINEMATEK team as head of press.

Born in 1954, Christian Bontinckx studied psychology, pedagogy and cinematography at the ULB in Brussels. He also finished studies in art at the art academy of Sint Josse and Anderlecht, worked as a psy and helped on papers like “does cinema make you a mean person? “ that was presented at BIFFF in 2001. He participated at at the writing of pedagogic short movies made by Fredeirc Dumont in 1994 and Vincent Lannoo in 1996. He also curates expos.

Thierry Vandersanden (Brussels, 1968°) studied editing at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion. After some jobs and a short period at the RTBF, he takes over “Le Moniteur du Film” in 1994. This is a magazine specializing in the distribution and the exploitation of films in Belgium. For five years, he’s the only editor, courier, typist, encoder and stamp gluer. In 1999, he joins the team of the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. Nowadays he’s head of the promotion and distribution services, responsible for supporting distributors, theater owners, workshops and festivals.

Ellen J. Babeliowsky (15/05/1986) is a Belgian filmdirector and cinematographer. From a very young age she was a natural storyteller and encouraged by her grandfather, she fell in love with cinema. In 2015 she graduated cum laude at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound – Brussels (RITCS). Her most known shortfilm ‘Motel Motel’ was nominated at several Film Festivals abroad and won some very nice awards like ‘Best Cinematography’ at the Wildsound Film Festival Toronto. Ellen has a special interest for genre-cinema and the surreal. As it seems, all her films have certain surreal elements and turn out to be a complete mindfuck. She finds her inspiration with Lynch and Buñuel. For now, Ellen is mostly writing scripts. She has a feature film and a documentary going in pre-production very soon and she’s selling her script for a tv-series to a big production company.

Zahra Benasri (Liège°) studied European Politics in the Netherlands. After graduating, she decided to focus on what she was always passionate about: film. She gained experience at film festivals, in marketing, in international sales and in production. She directed two self-produced short films, LA PETITE HONTE and PENDANT 12 ANS, JE SUIS NEE LE 6 MAI, a documentary that was screened at several international festivals. While distributing her films herself, she discovered that filmmakers of self-produced works did not receive support in distributing their productions. In 2023, she founded Hors du bocal, an international sales and distribution company for short films with a focus on self-produced films seeking to raise the profile of films with low visibility. At the same time, she is working on a new film as a director.

Filmed interviews : fascinating meetings with talents of Belgian cinema.
The Cinergie Jury, made up of dedicated critics, awards a prize to a short film in the BIFFF’s national short film competition. It offers an exclusive showcase with a film critic, as well as a filmed interview session.
Our goal is to support, promote and celebrate Belgian cinema in all its diversity!

After working for 5 years as marketing manager at the Cinéart movie distribution company, Gilles Reunis now is head of acquisitions at Betv-VOO and is in charge of broadcasting, selecting and buying feature films, movies made for TV and short films for PayTV and VOD. He’s also in charge of coproducing Belgian full length and short films.

François Stassens is the head of the SABAM’s audiovisual department. His mission is to be the go-to person between the SABAM and the French-speaking members of the audiovisual business.
His main role is to be present on the field, handle communication, operating files as well as the requests for sponsorship in the audiovisual business. He’s also very active at the Pro Spere federation, which is consisted of many authors’ associations specialized in audiovisual, as well at the movie department’s Consultation Committee of the Wallonia- Brussels Federation.

Manon has been Head of New Fiction Formats and Editorial Advisor at RTBF for 4 years. She graduated from Insas in 2005, before joining the fiction team at a public broadcaster. She has also worked as a freelance director, producer, scriptwriter for documentaries and head of camera and props on fiction sets.

Studied literature and cinema at the University of Paris VIII. Since 2006, head of Sales and Acquisitions at the short films Agency, Broadcast service: “I’ve had the pleasure of discovering many short films masterpieces, all by working in collaboration with producers, directors and buyers to put forward and valorize a thousands short films filled catalog made for all types of broadcasters around the world.”

Gökhan’s early fascination with movies was encouraged by his father, who took him to Sunday Matinées, where he saw his first sword-and- sandal film as well as lots of martial arts movies. He was performing as an extra in several short films and TV series. Gökhan is responsible for the selection of the short films for the Fantasy Film Fest which takes place in the late summer in several cities in Germany.