18.01.18, 20:30, X-ray: Je Tu Il Elle (Chantal Akerman, 1974, 86’)

Although Ireland has been independent from the United Kingdom for over a century, its colonial past continues to haunt the country’s streets and melodies. Driven by a stubborn determination, a young generation of musicians is turning to folk music “to strike fear into the hearts of priests and politicians”. Proud of their language and nationality, they are reviving old ballads and bringing them unflinchingly into the present day.

A journey across the island follows a motley crew of pierced punks, rappers, ravers and folk singers who find common ground in raucous jam sessions and shared indignation. Groups such as The Mary Wallopers, The Deadlians and Lankum make their voices heard and pass the story on to one another as the film progresses — just as the melody is passed on in a traditional music session. In a ballad that swings back and forth between archive footage and contemporary anger, Celtic Utopia forms a quest for the past, identity and the possibility of healing old wounds through song. What emerges is an Ireland that reinvents itself through a delicate dance with the past.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Dennis Harvey.

When Roman loses his twin brother in a car crash, his world falls apart. At his wits’ end, he decides to join a support group for grieving twins. There he meets the charming Dennis, a lonely twin who is grappling with his own traumas. Through their shared loss, the two men grow closer and become entangled in a co-dependent dynamic that blurs the boundaries of their identities. Twinless begins as a queer buddy comedy, but gradually takes on more surreal and sinister forms. In their search for fulfilment, the hall of mirrors of projections the two men have created for one another begins to feel increasingly like a labyrinth.

With this second feature film, emerging indie talent James Sweeney proves that his name is one to remember. Themes such as grief, loneliness and queer longing are explored here with sharp humour, yet with the necessary sincerity. The absurdism of the script sits so beautifully in tandem with the vulnerability of the flesh-and-blood characters. Cultural references such as The Parent Trap (1998) and The Sims (2000) also bathe the film in millennial melancholy.

Lookalikes dressed in the same style can attend the screening for free

This screening will be preceded by the short film Met Hoop op een Nieuwe Rol by Thieu Kessels.

Just before the Easter holidays, we would like to present you with another controversial Spanish classic from the oeuvre of Luis Buñuel. After a long period of exile in Mexico, the scandalous director returned to Spain to make Viridiana. Viridiana, played by the famous Mexican actress Silvia Pinal, is an unworldly nun who has to go and live with her uncle. While avoiding his advances, she tries to save the souls of the homeless people living nearby. Buñuel, always an opponent of religious self-righteousness, shows the naivety of the sister in her attempts to save the world through Christian morality.

Viridiana was banned by Franco's dictatorial government and by the powerful Vatican, labelled “blasphemous”. In one of the film's most notorious scenes, a drunken banquet freezes into a scene that cynically depicts Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper as a childish food fight. At its premiere, Viridiana was spat upon by petty bourgeois minds, but precisely for that reason it was also greedily savoured and awarded the Palme d'Or in 1961. Have a blissful Easter!

This film will be introduced by film history teacher Daniël Biltereyst.

Magic potions and spells, something is brewing in the witch's kitchen.

Cinema for the youngest cinema-goers! Parents and children aged 4 and above are welcome to this screening, where we present a varied and original series of films.

In Tokyo in the near future, the threat of a devastating earthquake hangs like a dark cloud over the daily lives of its inhabitants. Two best friends, on the verge of graduating from secondary school, play a prank on their headmaster. What starts innocently enough leads to the installation of an all-seeing surveillance system. Under the pressure of constant surveillance and an increasingly grim political climate, the friends are forced to confront their differences.

After Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus (2023), a film he produced in memory of his father, director Neo Sora makes his fiction debut with this sultry blend of socially critical satire and moving coming-of-age drama. With tender techno beats and observational elegance, he immerses the viewer in a subtly dystopian world that is frighteningly familiar. Torn between conforming or fighting back, the group of friends is forced to question their beliefs, desires and identities.

Welcome to The Stimming Pool, a space where neurodivergence can move freely and your body is gently shaken out of its assumptions. The Neurocultures Collective, brought together by artist and filmmaker Steven Eastwood, places neurodivergent creators not as subjects, but as authors at the centre. In this enchanting docufiction, their conversations and creative processes are interwoven into a quasi-fictional structure in which experience and imagination constantly intersect.

Filmed on clear 16mm by Aftersun (2022) cameraman Gregory Oke, a world unfolds that rubs against neurotypical logic. The viewer is immersed in a disorienting experience that makes it possible to feel what it is like to move in an environment that is not designed for you. The film explores how autism shapes creativity and how cinema, like neurodivergent perception, works through heightened sensitivity.

The title refers to “stimming”, the performance of repetitive movements that aid self-regulation. In the film, this is given a physical location: an empty swimming pool where the makers come together to move, dance and unmask themselves. The Stimming Pool thus becomes an invitation to make space for forms of being that too often remain invisible.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with various members of the Neurocultures Collective.

Tara is a young widow who returns to her village after the death of her grandfather. With a mysterious sabre as her only inheritance, she travels across the country with her two children. During this journey, she meets a mysterious knight from the distant past, who turns out to be searching for the sabre. However, his quest is complicated by his growing feelings for Tara. A melancholic ghost story derived from Iranian folklore, Ballad of Tara is above all a story about patriarchal village life, in which Tara, played by Susan Taslimi, leads a freer and more exciting life than the colourless men who surround her.

Beyzai, one of the founders of the Iranian New Wave of the 1960s, is best known for his work after the Iranian Revolution, such as Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989). Yet his little-seen work from before 1979 is actually even more remarkable for its outspoken feminism and daring aesthetics, with the anachronistic love story of Ballad of Tara as the finest example.

The film will be introduced by translator-interpreter and film curator Mahdieh Fahimi.

Some loves do not disappear. They hide. Under a bed, for example, where they breathe softly between dust and memory. In this colourful collage film, Olivia gives flowers to the spirit of an old lover in exchange for comforting rain clouds.

Other stories swirl around her. Barbara invents fantastic lies to make rejection bearable. Mauricio literally sinks into guilt. Ramón falls in love with a talking houseplant that looks suspiciously like Olivia. The film skilfully plays with the so-called Rashomon effect: one event has multiple versions, all of which are contradictory and yet equally credible. In this way, the film circles around itself and shifts perspective as if the characters' feelings themselves were speaking.

The images also refuse to remain still. This experimental debut by Tomás Pichardo Espaillant interweaves stop-motion animation, graphic sketches and claymation into a single whole. Various animators contributed to the film, visualising the collision, merging and disappearance of memories. The end result is a dreamlike collage about longing, loss and the stubborn beauty of lost love.

Once again, we are joining forces with cult film festival Offscreen for a film screening that will leave no stone unturned. This time, we accompany them to the altar of Spanish exploitation cinema with La Novia Ensangrentada, a silken nightmare that sinks its teeth into the patriarchal Spain of the 1970s. Susan has just got married and is already deeply unhappy. Strange visions put a damper on her honeymoon, while her husband displays increasingly strange behaviour. When they encounter a mysterious lady on the beach one day, their relationship becomes even more complex. The woman in question turns out to be a vampire who wants to recruit Susan into her order of eternally living lovers. It doesn't take long before the honeymoon turns bloody.

Partly seventies schlock, partly social criticism, The Blood Spattered Bride remains a scandalous film that packs a punch. Made during the rigor mortis of the Franco regime, the film drives a stake through the fascist ideals and normative gender relations of its time. As is customary in vampire mythology, the monstrous here is not merely a threat, but also the promise of transgressive liberation. More conventional monsters are thus shunned in order to explore the horror of the institution of marriage.

This screening will be preceded by the short film The Masque of the Red Death (2024) by Rune Callewaert.

Director Adela Sequeyro wrote this bold melodrama and also plays the role of Ana María, who flees her oppressive hacienda for a bohemian life full of romance and intrigue. With wit, style and daring, she reclaims her freedom. La Mujer de Nadie was and remains a groundbreaking story about female autonomy on the silver screen. Set against the backdrop of the 1930s, a period in which the Mexican film industry was still defining itself, Sequeyro's film positioned women not as moral symbols, but as active subjects.

This melodrama is the first sound film directed by a woman in Mexico. Through expressive close-ups, minimal dialogue and camera angles that were provocative at the time, Sequeyro explores a specific female erotic universe in which, as the title proudly declares, a woman can belong to no one. A radical statement in a culture where women always belonged to someone, whether as a mother, daughter, wife or sex worker.

This film will be introduced by Camilla Baier (Invisible Women) and Bart Versteirt (Cinea).