After taking home the Un Certain Regard Fipresci prize in 2018 for the trans-female ballet dancer feature Girl, filmmaker Lukas Dhont returned to home to find himself staring at the blank page for his next project.
21.05.2022 - 21:01 / deadline.com
Lukas Dhont’s Cannes debut was also his debut feature, Girl, which ran in Un Certain Regard in 2018. A stunning start for the young Belgian, the movie brought him the Caméra d’Or and myriad other prizes down the line. Now, four years later, Dhont is returning to Cannes with his follow-up, Close, which has landed him in the main competition.
“It feels unbelievable,” Dhont says of graduating to the Lumière theater. “Of course, we had an amazing journey with Girl, but we feel Close is more personal and universal.” It’s also a little nerve-rattling. “It’s such a personal film to me that sharing it at that scale is something.”
Close is centered on two 13-year-old boys who have been friends forever. That close friendship is disrupted when something happens in their lives that changes the course of it. Dhont describes the movie as being about “the deep connection and the vulnerability of friendship, and masculinity.”
He was inspired after returning home to Belgium post-Girl and recalling his first friendships and love stories. “I felt the urge to discover and explore male friendship. The intimacy of male friendship I haven’t seen as much on screen as I wanted to. It feels like friendships define who we are, maybe more than our other relationships.”
Looking back at Girl, the story of a 15-year-old girl born in the body of a boy, who dreams of becoming a ballerina, and the controversy it sparked—some trans critics called it irresponsible—Dhont calls it a learning experience. “I try to do everything in my life with authenticity, and love and respect for who I am and who others are, and I also have the same respect for people’s opinions. I think dialogue is something very important to me. At the end, it was an experience in which I
After taking home the Un Certain Regard Fipresci prize in 2018 for the trans-female ballet dancer feature Girl, filmmaker Lukas Dhont returned to home to find himself staring at the blank page for his next project.
Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are more than just friends and not at all lovers. At only 13 years of age, they’re too young for that – and what’s more, their bond transcends simple labels. First seen running through the lush meadows of rural Belgium, the duo share a complicity that is as natural and abundant as the late summer harvest.
Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticSPOILER ALERT: The penultimate paragraph of this review contains spoilers.Few of us are fortunate enough to have a friendship as intimate and effortless as the one shared by 13-year-old Belgian boys Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) in “Close.” That connection, and the responsibility that comes with it, is at the heart of Lukas Dhont’s sophomore feature, so subtle and sensitive in the first half, so devastatingly false from its tragic twist on. This beautifully evocative film, which hails from an openly queer director, offers as pure a portrait of innocent, innocuous same-sex affection as we’ve ever encountered on film.
Belgium’s Lukas Dhont takes a deserved step up to the Cannes Film Festival competition with Close, only his second film — a minimalist melodrama that shows a definite growth in visual style but may be confronting to some with its deliberately unhurried, Eric Rohmer-esque aesthetic. The international success of Dhont’s well-intentioned debut Girl, about a young trans-female ballet dancer, was somewhat blunted in the U.S., where G.L.A.A.D. amplified complaints of misrepresentation on behalf of the trans lobby. Close is a much safer proposition, but may yet sail into choppy waters with its themes of youth suicide.
A24 has picked up North American rights to Lukas Dhont’s Close.
A24 has made another acquisition out of Cannes, acquiring the North American rights to “Close,” the next film from Lukas Dhont, which is set to debut tonight in the main competition at Cannes. Dhont is the director of 2018’s “Girl,” which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, and the film stars Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele, and Émilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker, Kevin Janssens, Marc Weiss, Igor Van Dessel, and Léon Bataille.“Close” is described as a film about friendship and responsibility and follows two 13-year-old boys, Léo and Rémi, whose friendship suddenly gets disrupted.
Manori Ravindran International EditorGlobal streamer and distributor MUBI has struck again, this time snapping up select markets for Lukas Dhont’s keenly anticipated “Close.”MUBI has acquired the U.K., Ireland, Latin America, Turkey and India.The film stars Lea Drucker, Émilie Dequenne, Kevin Janssens and newcomers Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele. “Close” will receive its world premiere on Thursday at the festival, where it’s playing in competition.The film will be released theatrically followed by an exclusive MUBI streaming release.“Girl,” Dhont’s debut feature film, won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2018.
EXCLUSIVE: Mubi has acquired Lukas Dhont’s Cannes Competion entry Close for the UK, Ireland, Latin America, Turkey and India.
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