Best Belgian documentary movies

Far from Vietnam (1967)

In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.

Facing War (2025)

Jens Stoltenberg had planned to step down after nine years in the powerful position of NATO Secretary General. The 65-year-old politician had packed his bags to go home to his wife in Norway, as he had promised her. But then Joe Biden called and asked him to stay another year. Because in a troubled world, an experienced leader is needed more than ever. With unprecedented access, we follow Jens Stoltenberg through his last year as Secretary General of NATO.

Tomorrowland: 2010 (2010)

Angèle (2021)

Belgian pop star Angèle reflects on her life and hopes as she finds balance amid the tears, joys and loneliness of fame. Told through her own words.

The Sound of Belgium (2012)

In the late 1980s, the Belgian electronic New Beat music movement conquered dance floors worldwide, and all of a sudden Belgium was on the map. This eclectic predecessor of house music appeared to materialize out of nothing, but according to the makers of The Sound of Belgium, it was the product of a historical search for identity that apparently went back to the Battle of Waterloo and the aftermath of the First World War.

Black Sabbath: Live in Paris (1970)

This footage was originally shot at Théâtre 140 in Brussels, Belgium on October 3rd, 1970 for Yorkshire Television. Bootleggers have long repeated a fictional claim that done in Paris, but that has long since been debunked. In any case, this is the earliest footage of a complete concert of Black Sabbath in existence. Here they perform many songs from their most recent album at the time, PARANOID, as well as several from their debut. Interestingly, many of the songs from PARANOID feature their original pre-album lyrics - or Ozzy had simply forgotten the new ones! The original show was split into two halves and includes some behind-the scenes clips of the band before the show. Set List: Intro -> Paranoid , Hand Of Doom [alternate, improvised lyrics] -> Rat Salad , Iron Man, Guitar Intro -> Black Sabbath, N.I.B., Behind The Wall Of Sleep -> Jazz Improvisation, Walpurgis [a.k.a. War Pigs - alternate, improvised lyrics], Fairies Wear Boots.

Josephine Baker: The Story of an Awakening (2018)

How did a poor little black girl from Missouri become the Queen of Paris, before joining the French Resistance and finally creating her dream family “The Rainbow Tribe”, adopting twelve children from four corners of the world? This is the fabulous story of the first black superstar, Josephine Baker.

Before We Go (2014)

Brussels, La Monnaie Opera House. Three people near the end of their lives meet with choreographers, actors and musicians. They take part in a unique experience which involves music, dance and silence. Their journey becomes a tribute to the fragility of the human condition, between reality and representation, tragedy of the body and freedom of the spirit. Together they question their own relationship with death.

-22.7°C The Far North Musical Experience (2019)

The music producer Molécule stayed in a village in Greeland, where he recorded the sounds of the Artic to compose music. The viewer follows Molécule in his adventure in the extreme North, in a sensorial and musical immersion.

Tomorrowland 2016 (Official Aftermovie) (2016)

Great People of Tomorrow, The 13th magnificent edition of Tomorrowland came to a beautiful end. More than 200 nationalities wrote their unique story in this first chapter of The Elixir of Life. Friendships arose and created wonderful memories that will last forever… Relive all these magical moments and enjoy the Official 2016 Tomorrowland Aftermovie.

Tomorrowland: 2012 (Official After Movie) (2012)

During the magical weekend of 27, 28 and 29 July 2012 more than 180,000 visitors attended one of the most beautiful and talked about festivals in world. The 8th edition of Tomorrowland was one that would never be forgotten. An amazing festival, a magic location, wonderful decor, more than 400 artists and byfar the best public in the world! You can relive all of this now with the Tomorrowland after movie 2012.

High Energy: Disco on Amphetamines (2019)

By the end of the seventies, disco music, considered too mainstream, was dead. But DJs and dance floors still needed new records and faster rhythms. Built on synthesizer sounds, the hi-nrg (high energy) style swept the gay clubs before hitting the charts during the eighties.

Confessions to dEUS (2020)

Fleur Boonman interweaves the cinematographic impression of the 2019 'Ideal Crash' tour with a look back at 20 years of ideals and 'crashes' of the fans. Her uninhibited perspective, poetic imagery and experience as a psychologist provide added value. The pace of the film follows the rhythm of the album, while the narrative is the record itself. The meandering search for interfaces between the theme of each song and the emotional stories of the ups and downs in the fans' lives, enables the viewer their own perspective.

Whose Is This Song? (2003)

Adela Peeva explores the national origin of a song common amongst a set of countries, and finds that the answer is not as simple as one might think.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War. In 1960, the UN became the stage for a political earthquake as the struggle for independence in the Congo put the world on high alert. The newly independent nation faced its first coup d'état, orchestrated by Western forces and Belgium, which were reluctant to relinquish control over their resource-rich former colony. The US tried to divert attention by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the African continent. In 1961, Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was brutally assassinated, silencing a key voice in the fight against colonialism; his death was facilitated by Belgian and CIA operatives. Musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach took action, denouncing imperialism and structural racism. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev intensified his criticism of the US, highlighting the racial barriers that characterized American society.

Dreaming Walls (2022)

The end of an eight-year upmarket renovation of the legendary Chelsea Hotel is partly longed for and partly dreaded by the artists who still live there. The film grants us access to their apartments and interweaves the past with the present.

Apocalypse: The Battle of Verdun (2016)

A detailed account of one of the bloodiest battles of World War I. Between February and December 1916, the French and German armies relentlessly fought in the devastated camps around the village of Verdun.

The Paper Brigade (2018)

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

The Red Orchestra (2020)

This documentary re-examines the story of the Red Orchestra: the most important resistance network in Nazi Germany, whose operations extended from Berlin and Brussels to Paris.

The Lab (2013)

Since 9/11, the Israeli arms industries are doing bigger business than ever before. Large Israeli companies develop and test the vessels of future warfare, which is then sold worldwide by private Israeli agents, who manipulate a network of Israeli politicians and army commanders, while Israeli theoreticians explain to various foreign countries how to defeat civil and para-military resistance. All based on the extensive Israeli experience.The film reveals The Lab, which has transformed the Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank from a burden to a marketable, highly profitable, national asset.

Léon Trotsky - Un homme à abattre (2022)

On August 21, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City, after eleven years of exile. The killer, Ramon Mercader, a young Spanish communist, was a character straight out of a spy movie. He was recruited in 1937 by Stalin's secret service when the latter decided to eliminate Trotsky, that tireless opponent. Through the epic story of Trotsky's last years in exile in Mexico, enriched with flashbacks to his political past, this film, a true historical thriller, offers a cross-narrative between Trotsky's life in exile and the setting up, at the same time, of "Operation Duck", the code name for his assassination.

Goering's Catalogue: A Collection of Art and Blood (2021)

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.

A Volcano Odyssey (2012)

The epic story of the life of a volcano, capable of both causing the extinction of all things and helping the evolution of species, over 60 million years.

The Missing Picture (2013)

Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.

News from Home (1977)

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.

Kenny (2017)

An intimate and revealing portrait of Kenny Dalglish – the player, the man, the truth.

Empire of Dust (2011)

Lao Yang is head of logistics of the group. He is responsible for the equipment, building materials and food (mainly chickens) to arrive in the isolated Chinese prefab camp. The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things but so far the team hasn't received anything. With Eddy (a Congolese man who speaks Mandarin fluently) as an intermediate, Lao Yang is forced to leave the camp and deal with local Congolese entrepreneurs, because without the construction materials the road works will cease. What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny roller coaster of negotiations and misunderstandings, as Lao Yang learns about the Congolese way of making deals.

King on Screen (2023)

1976, Brian de Palma directs Carrie, the first novel by Stephen King. Since, more than 50 directors adapted the master of horror's books, in more than 80 films and series, making him now, the most adapted author still alive in the world.

Mbudha, in the Chimpanzees' Footsteps (2019)

In the northeast corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a ‘red zone’ remains, designated as such since the second war of the Congo, (1998–2002), where no foreigners have entered since 1999. The biologist Anne Laudisoit and her team of Congolese scientists embark upon a scientific exploration to identify species that dwell in one of the last virgin territories of Central Africa. In the lush yet inaccessible valleys of the Blue Mountains thrives an amazing startling biodiversity. Rumor has it that there are even chimpanzees.

The Event (2015)

In August 1991 a failed coup d'état attempt (known as Putsch) led by a group of hard-core communists in Moscow, ended the 70-year-long rule of the Soviets. The USSR collapsed soon after, and the tricolour of the sovereign Russian Federation flew over Kremlin. As president Gorbachev was detained by the coup leaders, state-run TV and radio channels, usurped by the putschists, broadcast Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" instead of news bulletins, and crowds of protestors gathered around Moscow's White House, preparing to defend the stronghold of democratic opposition led by Boris Yeltsin, in the city of Leningrad thousands of confused, scared, excited and desperate people poured into the streets to become a part of the event, which was supposed to change their destiny. A quarter of a century later, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the dramatic moments of August 1991 and casts an eye on the event which was hailed worldwide as the birth of "Russian democracy".