Event

With Peter Van den Begin, Lucie Debay

Opening Night Film 'King of the Belgians' at The Panorama Europe Film Festival

Friday, May 5, 2017 - 4:00am
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The 2017 edition of the Panorama Europe Film Festival features seventeen vibrant works—including witty comedies, gritty thrillers, and timely documentaries—representing some of the finest and most riveting films coming out of Europe today. The Festival will be filled with New York premieres, with opening and closing night events featuring special guests in person. This is a great opportunity to discover some of the most exciting new international filmmakers. Screenings will take place at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens and at the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan.

The Opening Night Film, on Friday, May 5, is King of the Belgians (Flanders, Belgium, 2016), a delightful faux-documentary, in which the King of Belgium finds himself on a wayward comic.

With director Jessica Woodworth in person, followed by discussion and opening reception 
Presented by the General Representation of the Government of Flanders to the U.S.A.

Belgium/Netherlands/Bulgaria. Dirs. Peter Brosens, Jessica Woodworth. 2016, 94 mins. With Peter van der Begin, Bruno Georis, Lucie Debay. In English, Flemish, French, Bulgarian with English subtitles. This “enormously appealing” (Variety) faux-documentary is a delightfully loopy comic road trip through Eastern Europe. While visiting Istanbul, the (somewhat awkward) King of Belgium receives word that Wallonia has seceded from his country, a national crisis that necessitates his immediate return. But when a sudden electrical storm makes flying impossible, he finds himself forced to make the journey by car. Joining a bus full of female folk singers, the king embarks on a wayward odyssey through the Balkans that will take him from a Bulgarian yogurt festival to a drunken night in Serbia, all captured on camera by a wry British documentarian along for the ride. Played to the deadpan hilt, this irresistibly goofball geopolitical satire touches delicately on the state of Europe today.  
 
Also showing Wednesday, May 17, 7:00 p.m. at Bohemian National Hall.