Between segregation and cosmic revelation, The Magic City traces the birth of Sun Ra, where a city becomes myth and a man, a galaxy. On May 22, 1914, Herman Poole Blount arrived on Earth in Birmingham, Alabama, nicknamed ‘The Magic City’ — an industrial southern city marked by segregation. After leaving the city at the age of 32, he would become Sun Ra, one of the most eccentric and prolific jazz musicians of the century, as well as the founder of a remarkable cosmic philosophy. The Magic City is both a portrait of the artist as a young man and a portrait of a city through time. It tells the story of the musician’s early years in this city-universe that is at once political and magical, ordinary and fantastical, unsettling and fascinating.

In the presence of the directors.

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An ecological futuristic fable where human survival plays out inside a movie theater. In Brussels, the last habitable city of the planet, beer yeast spreads everywhere—even onto the film reel. Inside the cinema, people panic, philosophize and try to invent survival strategies. Absurd sci-fi and playful cinematic experiments turn this film into a living organism. An unapologetic musical about freedom of expression, faith and desire. Halfway between opéra bouffe, wildlife film and karaoke, Ver-Vert follows the journey of a parrot that was first welcomed in a convent to be taken by soldiers afterwards. The film, inspired by the poem of Jean-Baptiste Gresset, written in 1734, interweaves singing nuns with swearing sailors. Éléonore Saintagnan creates a playful yet cheeky mirror of our contradictions: faith and desire, rules and freedom, sacred and trivial. The film sings, swears and enchants.

In the presence of the directors.

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A young illustrator behind the comic museum counter struggles to keep hope alive. Nérina, a young author and illustrator, juggles her cashier job with her artistic creation. Working at the Comic Strip Museum in Brussels, and driven by the hope of being published one day, she faces invisibility. Surrounded by the great names of the ninth art, her dream slowly crumbles and gradually loses its magic. Sauf le passé questions the gaze during a guided and critical tour of the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren. Sauf le passé takes viewers into the corridors of the Africa Museum in Tervuren, an institution burdened by a colonial history of violence and propaganda. Through the perspectives of guides and the groups they accompany, the film examines the tensions between colonial memory and contemporary narratives. Behind the renovated displays, a pressing question remains: can a museum be decolonized without decolonizing the gaze?

In the presence of the directors.

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Punk, electro, feminism: four friends set the stage ablaze and reinvent the collective. Forsissies follows a feminist punk-electro band born in Brussels. Four friends, concerts that ignite, jams that explode: a film about the raw energy of creation and the power of the collective. Artist Karina Beumer looks for people interested in taking her place. What if one could post an ad to be replaced in one’s own life? Karina Beumer takes on the experiment, reshaping her daily reality with a Michel Gondry–like inventiveness. The responses she receives reveal stark realities: undocumented people seeking legal status, an unemployed woman dismissed as “too old”… Beneath the humor lies a political and poetic reflection on identity, creation, and the place each of us may – or may not – occupy in society.

In the presence of the directors.

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An intimate exploration to understand how images design, imprison or liberate. Filmmaker and visual artist Marion Guillard dives back into fifteen years of collected footage. Birds, American landscapes, family archives, memories of a body both hated and desired. A bulimia of images, of life. First fascinated, then saturated by her work as a wildlife filmmaker, she questions the frozen beauty imposed by images of nature, echoing the injunctions her own body has endured, marked by fatshaming. What do we do with images? And what do they do to us? Joyful journey into the farming world in search of beauty. City-dweller Clara Beaudoux joins her uncle Michel, a farmer in the French region Beauce, to explore beauty in fields, machines, and gestures of daily life. This poetic and humorous road-trip builds an honest dialogue between two worlds while breaking down social snobbery.

In the presence of the directors.

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In the projection booth of CINEMATEK in Brussels, women’s voices emerge and tell their stories. On the preserved film reels, men have stripped, confined, watched, and killed countless women. Between horror and claustrophobia, cinema becomes a field of resistance. Women have always built architecture, yet their history is erased — Out of the Picture exposes this imposed silence and fights for their visibility. For centuries women have designed spaces, built projects, and transformed architecture. Yet they remain largely invisible in official narratives. This film investigates: why this exclusion? Who organizes and perpetuates it? Through the voices and works of women architects, Out of the Picture explores the mechanisms of erasure at work within the profession. The film also questions the frameworks: those of history, the city, power, and image. It poses a central question: who is granted access to the frame?

In the presence of the directors.

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In the shadow of the shelves, the cassettes whisper the memory of a world that endures. This sensory 16 mm film immerses us in a cassette and CD shop in Beirut. A tribute to the discreet carriers which fragile resistance allows works of art to continue to circulate and survive. When their son leaves for Estonia, a couple must learn to live again without the center of their world. Guangdong and his wife Baoyan devoted their lives to their gifted son’s musical career, student at the acclaimed Music Academy of Beijing. As he enrolls in the Conservatory of Tallinn, Estonia, they must face his absence. The film delicately explores the balance between caring and letting go, between pride and emptiness. Or how the couple finds a new meaning of life when until now they they consecrated everything to the artistic success of their child.

In the presence of the directors.

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Portrait of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, a versatile choreographer who has captivated critics and audiences alike. Filmed over two years, the documentary reveals an artist who collaborated with Beyoncé, Madonna, and Marina Abramović. Blending opera, hip-hop, and musicals, Cherkaoui embraces his multiple identities: Arab, white, gay, vegan. A joyful yet intimate portrait of a creator for whom every work is political.

In the presence of the director.

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A sensitive and radiant portrait of Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan. The American filmmaker Marie Valentine Regan captures a vibrant portrait of 96-year-old Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan in her final creative moments before she disappeared in 2021. Tenderness and humor mix with her reflections on love, desire, time, and death, set in intimate scenes of daily life - a light-filled flat, a small birthday party, the mountains that haunt her imagination. An ode to joy, self-affirmation, and art as resistance. Marie Valentine Regan schetst een levendig portret van de 96-jarige Adnan in haar laatste creatieve momenten. Tederheid en humor mengen zich met haar reflecties over liefde, verlangen, tijd en dood, in scènes van intiem dagelijks leven. Een ode aan vreugde, zelfbevestiging en kunst als verzet.

In the presence of the director.

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