In the hypnotic opening scene of The Invader, refering to Michelangelo Antonioni and Gustave Courbet’s painting L’origine du monde, Belgian model Hannelore Knuts walks naked along a beach when she sees several African refugees struggling to survive as they are washed ashore. What follows is an intense, consistent crossover between social drama, revenge film and Lynch-like trip, in which this earthly paradise turns into a hell for one of the refugees. In a ghostly Brussels, the man starts work illegally on a building site. ‘You nothing here, nothing at all’, his crooked boss tells him. The Invader is Flemish video artist and short-film maker Nicolas Provost’s feature debut. At the Ghent Film Festival it won the Jo Röpke Award for young Flemish Film Talent and the award for best director at Cinéma tous écrans in Geneva. The camerawork by Frank van den Eeden also deserves praise, as does the starring role by Issaka Sawadogo, who switches convincingly between victim and aggressor.
Film details
Country of production
Belgium
Year
2011
Festival edition
IFFR 2012
Length
95'
Medium/Format
35mm
Language
French
Premiere status
None
Director
Nicolas Provost
Producer
Jacques-Henri Bronckart, Olivier Bronckart, Antonino Lombardo, Helena Danielsson
Principal cast
Stefania Rocca, Issaka Sawadogo, Hannelore Knuts
Editing
Nico Leunen
Screenplay
François Pirot, Nicolas Provost, Giordano Gederlini
Cinematography
Frank van den Eeden
Sound design
Senjan Jansen
Music
Senjan Jansen
Production company
Versus Production, Prime Time, Hepp Film International AB