Top 30 : Best Flemish movies (beste vlaamse films aller tijden)

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

A group of teenagers, unprepared for their final exams due to their indulgence in more pleasurable pursuits, barricade themselves in their school and challenge their despised and sadistic headmaster.

Sint-Truiden, Belgium. Jacky, a young cattle farmer who is constantly pumped on steroids and hormones, is approached by a veterinarian to make a deal with a notorious beef trader.

Five close friends, all of them married, share a loft to meet their mistresses. One day they find the body of a young woman in the loft. Since there are only five keys to the loft, the five men begin to suspect each other of murder.

A thirty-something novelist and impending father looks back on his all-too-formative years in the hapless, alcohol-ridden milieu of his youth in 1980s rural Flanders, Belgium.

Elise and Didier fall in love at first sight, in spite of their differences. He talks, she listens. He's a romantic atheist, she's a religious realist. When their daughter becomes seriously ill, their love is put on trial.

Vincke and Verstuyft are the best detectives of the Antwerp police department. They are confronted with the murder on a leading executive and put all their effort to catch the murderer.

Two young men share an incurable illness. Is their love for the women in their lives strong enough to conquer their fear of dying?

When the gendarmes order a garage owner to open the boot of his car, they find a treasure of shares, jewels, gold and bonds. They belong to an old opera singer who got robbed. The garage owner drove the car at the request of Jules Depraeter, a bon vivant and dubious businessman from Ghent. When he is questioned by the police, he causes the Ghent examining magistrate Jensens to fall down as he wanted Depraeter to kill his wife. Based on a true story.

An undercover inspector of the Antwerp criminal investigation unit faces problems not only in his professional life, but also at home. When he is partnered with a young, over-confident colleague, he loses control over the case in hand, a situation that further takes its toll on his marriage. He's forced to ask himself whether his job is an addiction, a hunt for people that becomes more exciting the shrewder his opponent is.

Based on a true story, 'Tot altijd' introduces us to a band of friends in the eighties, who spend their days enjoying their youth and turbulent (love) life. Mario Verstraete (Koen De Graeve) rushes into marriage with Sofie (An Miller), who gives birth to their son Milan. His secret admirer Lynn (Lotte Pinoy) takes a step back. A few years later, Mario and Sofie divorce and the group fragments. Thomas (Geert Van Rampelberg), a recent medicine graduate and Mario's closest friend, gets stuck between a rock and a hard place when he diagnoses Mario with MS (Multiple Sclerosis). Though not a fatal disease, it slowly consumes the patient's bodily functions and - in some cases - their minds. Mario becomes the leading spokesman for the action group Waardig Sterven ("Dignified Death") in support of the Belgian legalisation of euthanasia. Thomas does everything in his power to avoid losing his best friend, but also can't stand the sight of his continued degeneration. The film follows the journey of both Thomas and Mario, as the latter asks: "will you help me, when the time comes?"

Harry Voss' life spans three pivotal days: his carefree youth, high school graduation, and lonely middle age, exploring life's fleeting moments and unfulfilled dreams.

Matty, a 41-year old mother of three with a husband in his midlife-crisis, meets 29-year old Johnny, a truck driver, who takes an interest in her.

In a juvenile lockup, a new ward answers questions: she's Rosie, 13, no parents, a sister Irene, a brother Michel. In flashbacks we find out what happened. She lives with Irene, who's 27, whom Rosie knows is in fact her mother, but that's their secret. Irene's brother Michel, unemployed, a compulsive gambler, comes to stay with them. Around then, Irene meets Bernard; they come to care for each other. This leaves Rosie without attention, so she puts all her adolescent hopes and romantic fantasies into a relationship with Jimi, a good looking kid she sees on a bus. Is it adventures with Jimi that land her in juvie? Once she's there, why doesn't he answer her letters?

A Belgian business executive takes on his country's justice system after a procedural error that released his wife's murderer drives him to take matters into his own hands.

A young man having lost his familiy as a boy in an accident comes to Brussels. There he falls in love with a girl who drives trams.

Jean is a family man and factory worker who dreams of becoming a songwriter. Pinning his hopes on his teenage daughter, Marva, he takes her to singing contests in which the awkward and overweight girl struggles to belt out a tune. When Jean is suddenly fired because of cut backs, he is ashamed and even more desperate to have his daughter succeed. In a chance meeting Jean kidnaps the most famous pop star in the country and holds her hostage demanding to be heard by the music industry. Catching the attention of the media and the eyes of the nation, Jean and Marva realize that the show must go on until everyone is famous.

The drama follows two brothers who start a bar and get swept up in its success in the midst of Belgium's nightlife scene.

When Mavela, member of the notorious youth gang Black Bronx, falls madly in love with a boy from a rival gang, she is forced to make a choice between loyalty and love. A choice that will have dramatic consequences.

Flanders' countryside in Belgium's early decades didn't belong to the hard-working farmers, like patriarch Van Paemel, who would rather die then consider any alternative to knowing his place and responding to problems like Animal farm's donkey, toiling even harder till it kills him anyhow. He rules his family expecting similar servitude, but cruel fate sees to it that his gentle son Desiré has a terrible, ill-compensated, never trialled life-long crippling rifle-accident, reducing the good, now unproductive boy to dreaming about emigration to America in never-ending pain, at the idle hands of the hunting party hosted by the baron who owns everything, and takes like his ruling class a very dim view at the demands, spearheaded by the young Socialist party, of the less docile new generation, whose protests are put down violently by gendarmes (paramiltary police)...

This Flemish heimat-movie after a novel by Felix Timmermans, the title of which translates as "farmers psalm", is about the at first sight idyllic, but actually tragical life of Wortel, a god-fearing peasant in a pre-war Belgian village, who has a hard time accepting the curate's assurance it's all part of God's grand plan when his loved ones keep coming to terrible harm, and searching solace in the hand-carving of a wooden statue of Christ.

Georges, a workman in his forties, get unexpected released from jail after being imprisoned for two years for having passed a sexual relation with his daughter. Once arrived home, he encountered himself in a difficult situation: Meanwhile him being in imprisoned, his wife started a love affair with his best friend, and more, she has gotten a child from him. Georges is prepared to forgive his wife, as a compensation for the crime committed with their daughter, and under the condition that she comes back to live with him. In this complex and emotional loaded situation, Georges and his wife are trying to find back peace of mind and to go on with their lives.

Hector had been in the orphanage for 35 years, until his aunt Ella and uncle Achiel pick him up. They want him to work at their bakery. At his new home he also helps training Achiel's son, Jos, who wants to be a cycling champion, and Ella with studying her role in a play.

College initiation rites on one Belgian campus end in tragic death of one freshman. His friends are determined to see the justice done.

The true story of Rocco Granata, an Italian coal miner's son who followed his passion for music against his father's wishes and social barriers.