News

After the star graduate of an elite Belgian tennis academy commits suicide, her shocking death triggers an investigation into the late teenager’s relationship with the (now suspended) older male coach who’d been so instrumental to her success. That investigation gradually but inevitably comes to focus on the coach’s latest protégé, who’s spent the last several years under his wing, and is on the cusp of qualifying for the Belgian Tennis Federation. People can’t help but suspect that she knows a thing or two about how coach Jeremy (Laurent Caron) treats his pupils when no one else is around to see. Her friends, her parents, the administrators at her school… everyone is eager for her to fill in the blanks, but Julie keeps quiet.

Needless to say, Leonardo Van Dijl’s “Julie Keeps Quiet” doesn’t regard that as much of a spoiler. This impressive debut...

"I just need to concentrate on school and tennis." Film Movement has unveiled an official US trailer for an acclaimed indie film titled Julie Keeps Quiet, a Belgian thriller about a star tennis player. This premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Critics Week sidebar, then played at the Karlovy Vary, Melbourne, Vancouver, and Toronto Film Festivals last year. As the star player at an elite tennis academy, Julie's life revolves around the game she loves. When her coach is suddenly suspended following the suicide of one of his female protégées, all the players at the academy are encouraged to speak up about their experiences with him. Julie, however, decides to keep quiet. Executive produced by tennis champion Naomi Osaka, the film is a "tense, taut, artfully hushed debut feature" by Belgian writer-director Leonardo van Dijl. Led by newcomer Tessa Van den Broeck whose key performance "embodies the different ways trauma is internalized,...

The Belgium submission for the 2025 Oscars blends the sports intensity of “Challengers” with the emotional weight of “She Said.”

The hauntingly titled “Julie Keeps Quiet,” which is screenwriter Leonardo Van Dijl’s directorial debut, was shot on film like fellow tennis drama “Challengers,” but the comparisons end there. Tessa Van den Broeck stars as a top player at an academy who stays silent when her older male coach is suspended amid an investigation.

The official synopsis reads: “As the star player at an elite youth tennis academy, Julie’s life revolves around the game she loves. She trains hard, pausing only for class or physical therapy before returning to the gym fixated on making it into the Belgian Tennis Federation. When her coach Jérémy is suddenly suspended following the suicide of one of his female protégées, all the players at the academy are encouraged to speak up about their experiences with him.

For teenage tennis prodigy Julie, discipline isn’t merely a virtue but a survival strategy. Repressing adolescent urges and emotional swings has long been part of her routine at the high-level youth tennis academy where she’s currently the star student: Years of concentrating all her time and attention on her game — all work and all play, as it were — look likely to reward her with the pro career she dreams of. Yet as whispers build of inappropriate behavior by her coach, Julie’s deliberate tunnel vision seems less a rigorous regimen than a fragile defense against interior collapse. A tense, taut, artfully hushed debut feature by Belgian writer-director Leonardo van Dijl, “Julie Keeps Quiet” also knows the value of control — though its own calm is fraught with anxiety and anger.

A standout of this year’s Critics’ Week programme at Cannes — where it won the Sacd Award and scored sales including a U.

Belgian director Leonardo Van Dijl’s assured debut feature, Julie Keeps Quiet, builds a riveting psychological drama around the choice of a star player from an elite youth tennis academy not to speak up in the wake of tragedy. In her first acting role, young tennis ace Tessa Van den Broeck internalizes the title character’s brooding unease with slow-burn intensity. The movie’s silence is so loaded with the anxiety, obstinance, inchoate anger and desire for anonymity of the traumatized teenage sportswoman that the constant thwack of her racquet hitting the ball cuts through the tension like violent shocks.

Unfolding predominantly in static frames that keep the story laser-focused, with pinpoint use of American contemporary classical composer Caroline Shaw’s needling vocal score, this is an austerely effective work. It has a kinship with Laura Wandel’s Playground from 2021 and last year’s The Teachers’ Lounge by İlker Çatak,...

Jour2Fete has acquired French distribution rights to Cannes Critics’ Week title Julie Keeps Quiet.

The debut feature of Belgian director Leonardo Van Dijl, Julie Keeps Quiet is set in an elite tennis academy. When an investigation into her tennis coach ignites and he is suspended, all of the club’s players are encouraged to speak up but star player Julie chooses to keep quiet - leaving the investigation and the coach’s future in doubt. Van Dijl’s short film Stephanie played in Cannes, San Sebastian and TIFF in 2020 and was set in the world of gymnastics.

International sales for...

Chicago – All this fuss about Ben Affleck not getting nominated by the Academy after directing three decent flicks is even more inane in light of the fact that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, arguably the greatest directing duo in modern cinema, haven’t garnered any Oscar attention. At all. Their latest naturalistic triumph, “The Kid with a Bike,” snagged a mere Golden Globe nod several months before it even premiered on U.S. screens.

The alleged edge-of-your-seat suspense in “Argo” has all the tautness of a snail race compared to the blistering tension conjured by the Dardenne Brothers as their camera confines the audience within the solitude, desperation and mounting dread of their troubled protagonists. “The Kid with a Bike” is the Dardennes’ most excruciatingly suspenseful and emotionally galvanizing effort since their 1996 breakthrough, “La Promesse.” Both films center on self-sufficient boys in danger of deteriorating into destructive products of their environment,...

Chicago – The sullen little boy is always on the run. His red shirt and jacket cause him to resemble a crimson blur against the green and gray landscape of his Belgian town. He believes that there must be an explanation for why his absent father has left him in a state-run youth farm, and is determined to track him down. Consumed with confusion and rage, the boy has no choice but to keep moving toward a destination that may not exist.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

This may sound like a hopelessly depressing premise, but in the hands of celebrated auteurs Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, it emerges as a riveting, immensely powerful meditation on the need for human connection. It’s also incredibly tense for a quietly nuanced drama, and viewers may find themselves spending much of the film holding their collective breaths with the hope that no harm will come to the pint-sized yet stubbornly resourceful protagonist.