Hubert Lampo

An Antwerp journalist finds his daily life increasingly disrupted by unexplained phenomena, such as an authentic letter from 1919 that refers to an event taking place at a much later date. Because these disturbances are consistently linked to the name “Joachim Stiller,” the journalist becomes obsessed with it. The resolution, which is closely tied to his traumatic experiences from the Second World War, takes place with a psychiatrist—and later at an abandoned railway station in an Antwerp suburb. Interwoven with this is a subplot about an Antwerp art dealer who believes he can become rich through a new form of painting. To achieve this, he takes a mentally disabled artist hostage. The narrative also follows various romantic entanglements involving the journalist, which ultimately lead to his happy experience of fatherhood.

In this atmospheric psychological drama by Jef van der Heyden, concert pianist Kasper Bertheim lives under psychiatric care in Geel, haunted by the memory of a woman he believes has vanished into the underworld. After witnessing a funeral, he leaves his foster home and wanders through a surreal cityscape that seems suspended between life and death. Along the way, he encounters workers, drifters, priests and other outsiders who guide him deeper into his obsessive search. Adapted from a novel by Hubert Lampo, the film blends psychological drama with magical realism, creating an ambiguous world where madness, grief and imagination merge, and where it remains uncertain whether Kasper’s visions are delusions or glimpses of another reality.

A curator in a museum meets a woman he knows from a centuries old painting.