This year, for its 14th edition, Offscreen film festival has taken the exceptional measure of swapping its customary March dates for a September slot. And so we promise you a sizzling autumn line-up with a retrospective that plugs directly into the hot topic du jour: Eco Horror & Climate Fiction.
The consequences of climate change and mankind’s disruption of nature are now palpably affecting our everyday lives, but science fiction and ecological horror films have been issuing warnings since the 1970s. Scenarios that might once have seemed farfetched are now being overtaken by reality, as can be seen in the selection of ten films screened at Nova, complemented by some twenty titles at the Cinematek. Taken together, they paint a dark but not always hopeless picture of the current era, the Anthropocene, a period in which the fragile balance of our ecosystem is at risk of being crushed by humanity’s heavy footprint.
With "Offscreenings", we present an artfully curated selection from the best unconventional cinema of the past two years (including some films that we were unable to screen before last year’s festival was interrupted by lockdown), as well as an equally canny selection of recent Belgian shorts under the banner "Shortscreen".
Even if this edition is slightly more streamlined than usual, with fewer thematic modules and accompanying events, we will still be treating you to a scintillating "ABC Night" with the emphasis on erotic, focusing on celebrated French iconoclast Jean-Pierre Bouyxou and his Belgian chums.