Life does not go well the last couple of years for film director Serge Gabriëls. Since the day he chose his career above the woman of his life, things kept going downhill. When a bailiff was sent to declare his production company bankrupt, he lost all hope and perspective. Fortunately at that crucial moment he received the one phone call he has been waiting for his whole life. Out of the blue, Serge is offered the opportunity to realize the dream of his lifetime: to shoot a real love story.
A disjointed group of colleagues gets a new manager. For his ultimate plan to enhance their working attitude, he invites them to a team building weekend.
In this filmed version of Flemish author Jef Gheeraerts' novel, Robert 'Robbe' Parain, an arrogant Antwerp police detective who operates at the limits of illegality and is in personal debt, tenaciously traces but also gets personally entangled in the dark, ruthless, criminal sides of the publicly so glamorous trade in diamonds, notably in his native Antwerp, Hong Kong, Brussels and Congo.
In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.
In this light-hearted low-budget comedy, two very different Flemish tween bachelors are best buds. Peter is a responsible professional, who's excited to get his first proper account as copy-writer in a small Belgian publicity firm- for condoms, a product the conservative boss dreads as slightly obscene. Tom however is a dare-all without much sense of decency, who earns his living as process-server and repo-man for a judicial bailiff. In their free time they're nearly inseparable, Tom cheering up his somewhat gloomy realistic friend and urging him to take silly risks during a weekend at the seaside and even cheat on his steady girlfriend. When the graphics department refuses to execute Peters idea for the condom campaign without a live male model, only Tom is pleasantly mad enough to pose stark-naked.
The Inquisition is in full swing in 16th century Flanders. Wanted for his dissident writings, the alchemist doctor Zeno has been wandering Europe under an assumed name for twenty years. But he remains a non-conformist. He returns to his native Bruges, where he thinks he has been forgotten. In this silent labyrinth where the faces of the past resurface, he rediscovers his identity and thus signs his death warrant.
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