The Sundance film festival opened under clear Park City skies and a relatively balmy 45 degrees with the traditional Day One press conference at the Egyptian theater where Salt Lake Tribune movie critic Sean Means welcomed festival director John Cooper, Keri Putnam who heads the Sundance Institute and Sundance founder Robert Redford. The actor, producer and all-around Sundance legend said: “What I’m looking forward is to most is the audience response. That ultimately is the takeaway from the festival, we go into it as a blank slate and their response is what remains”. Cooper agreed adding that the festival comes to life thanks to “the energy that audiences bring here.” Festival goers will be able to screen some of the 120 features from the U.S. and around the world as well as, Putnam reminded, a diverse slate of shorts, documentaries, episodic drama and virtual reality, the immersive technology which this year is creating a big buzz at the festival’s New Frontier section. “It’s going to be a slate of very diverse films and an exciting year.” Cooper concluded, “but the criteria has not really changed, we are still looking for new voices, creativity, new ways of telling stories.” Those will have come from over 12,000 films, which were submitted to the heroic programmers throughout last year (it means that for every film screened, 35 didn’t make the cut).

Having dispensed with ceremony the hundreds of journalists who attended the press conference – some recent arrivals handling the altitude syndrome better than others – dispersed to the now traditional multiple opening-day screenings. This year there were 5 including a program of shorts: Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You from documentary makers and Sundance veterans Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, Detropia), Other People a dramedy from SNL writer Chris Kelly starring Jesse Plemons and Molly Shannon, Kevin MacDonald’s documentary The Art of Cai-Guo Quiang on the Chinese “fire artist” and Belgica, the fifth feature from Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen.

Van Groeningen was nominated for an Academy award in 2012 for his previous The Broken Circle Breakdown and Belgica is an equally heartfelt and original effort. Centering on two brothers from Ghent (Van Groeningen’s home town) the film follows the siblings’ efforts in running a rock club, the Belgica. In what might be termed a Flemish take on the subject matter currently explored by Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl, the film is probably one of the most accurate representations of the “rock ‘n roll lifestyle” recently put on film. Working with editor Nico Leunen, Van Groeningen finds utterly original ways to lay out his narrative timeline and viscerally transmit the chaos and exhilaration of being at the thrilling center of club throbbing with music (plus the required doses of sex and drugs). This is effective largely due to the use of music, a mainstay for Van Groeningen, which this time benefits from the score by brothers Stephen and David Dewaele. The duo, also known by their performer monikers of Soulwax and 2ManyDJs, composed much of the music and assembled invented bands of varying styles but unswerving energy to stand in as club performers. Thanks to them the film achieves the real feeling of a burgeoning rock and house music scene and the heady excitement it engenders. The antics will eventually take a toll on the brothers’ relationship but never in a trite or contrived way. To the credit of the film stars’, Tom Vermeir and Stef Aerts, their emotional relationship stays as the true dramatic center of the story. All in all a film that opened the fest on the exciting note Cooper was hoping for and confirms the current burst of creativity for the tiny northern region of Flanders which has already given us Bullhead and Matthias Schoenaerts.

Luca Celada