Producer Hans Everaert (whose company Menuetto was behind last year’s Cannes Jury Prize winner The Eight Mountains by Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch) has warned that documentaries are facing a financial crunch.
“At the moment, we are more focusing for new projects on fiction. Actually, documentary is really difficult to make a living on it, let’s say. Financing is very limited. There are a lot of projects in development,” the veteran exec comments.
Nonetheless, the company still has plenty of docs on its slate. Everaert is at Connext this week with open of them, Two Square (Metres 2m2) by Volkan Üce.
Currently in pre-production, this is a story about burial, immigration, religion and commerce. Writer-director Volkan Üce focuses on the life of a Turkish undertaker based in Belgium.
“I really liked All-In,” Everaert says of his admiration for Üce’s previous film which was about two young men working over a long summer in a Turkish hotel. “He has a special kind of feeling for humour without losing sight of content and the theme as such. He has an approach which is funny even on a serious subject. When we talked about Two Square Metres (2m2), it’s the same dynamic where he is talking about an even more serious subject, where people want to be buried, Turkish migrants in this case, but the way he treats it is quite funny.”
In the documentary, Üce looks in sometimes comical depth at the economics of the undertaking business. He is dealing with grief, nostalgia and longing – but also with economics and logistics.
Everaert is looking for German backers for the project which already has Mitra aboard as Turkish co-producer. “We first looked at Holland but there are very few projects that we can fund between Belgium and Holland because there is not much money in the co-production fund on both sides,” Everaert says.
Germany, he suggests, is a natural place to turn to instead, given the large Turkish community in the country. The aim is to have the project financed in early 2024. During Connext, Everaert will be looking for a sales agent.
2m2 is one of several documentaries currently being developed by Menuetto. Early in its existence, the company, founded by Everaert (former business director of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund [VAF] in 2017), produced Brexit Behind Closed Doors by Lode Desmet, a film which looked at the lengthy negotiations for the UK to leave the EU.
Everaert himself has a passion for cultural docs. Another new non-fiction project he is pushing is Jan Hoet – Thank God for the Gift directed by Luc Vrydaghs. This is now almost completed. It tells the story of how Hoet became one of Belgium’s best known and most outspoken curators and art experts.
The Menuetto boss is moving ahead with Manu Riche’s new feature doc Carbon – The Eternal Fire which looks at Europe’s increasing dependence on fossil fuel over the last century. This is currently in production and is looking at a release early next year.
“We are trying to add Germany to the co-production. We would like to shoot in northern Germany,” Everaert explains. The film will also now look at the impact on energy policy of the Ukraine war.
On the fiction side, Everaert is hatching a new collaboration with Felix Van Groeningen. It’s too early to reveal details of this but the writer-director has recently completed a first treatment, the producer points out.
Meanwhile, Menuetto’s long gestating Heysel 85 project is edging closer to production. Hans Herbots has stood down as director because of scheduling issues and his replacement will be announced shortly. The film deals with the tragic events in the Heysel Stadium during the Liverpool v Juventus European Cup Final of 1985 when 39 people were killed following crowd trouble. Most of the drama in the film unfolds in the catacombs which became the centre of operations as the disaster unfolded. This was where the players were waiting, alongside the dead.
Menuetto also has a new feature from Patrice Toye (Rosie), one of the doyennes of Flemish filmmaking. This has the working title The Assignment and is based on a Dutch novel about a teenage boy at a summer camp in the 1940s, not long after the end of the war. The VAF has provided script and development support for the project which is now looking for production financing. “It is not a hugely expensive project but we will still need co-production money probably from Holland and the French-speaking community,” the producer notes. The hope is to shoot next summer.
Meanwhile, the company is developing Torpor, the first feature from Meltse Van Coillie (whose shorts Elephantfish and Zonder meer have screened widely on the international festival circuit). Recently selected for the Cannes Cinéfondation, Torpor takes place in the Arctic entirely at night time and follows scientists on a research visit to a village where the local population is in hibernation. “It’s all covered in ice and it’s all in the dark,” Everaert explains the setting. And, yes, polar bears do put in an appearance.
