The Festival Imagésanté, which had to cancel its March 2020 edition just a few days before opening, also signed this letter, which we offer here. We’re working on postponing this edition, which would have featured many new features, until next March.

Here is the open letter sent by the film festivals in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation to the relevant Ministers to raise their concerns about the critical situation that festivals are currently facing as a result of the pandemic.

OPEN LETTER – JUNE 18, 2020

Dear Sir/Madam,

Like many other players in the cultural world, film festivals in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation have been devastated by the Covid-19 crisis. Several of us have been stopped, others cancelled and some postponed in a difficult context.

This exceptional health situation has further highlighted the fragility of our events. Setting up our projects is often a balancing act, and we didn’t wait for this coronavirus to confront us with uncertainty on a regular basis. Over the past 10 years, we have seen the situation become progressively more complicated, with more onerous specifications, rising costs, a tendency for subsidies to decline, and growing difficulty in obtaining private support.

We regret that we have not been mentioned recently, either as cinema operators in the specific audiovisual support plan, or in the support plan for festivals in general. Yet the challenges we face are many. In the short term, we’ll be faced with the same obstacles as movie theaters: the difficulty of welcoming as many spectators as before, and of collecting enough revenue to cover our film and theater rental costs in particular. As for the sanitary measures in force, these will also apply to festivals, and will therefore entail additional costs.

While we have no doubt that we’ll be part of the relaunch at some point, it seemed crucial to us today to get together to write to you, express our concerns and remind you of our specific characteristics and the different roles we play.

Film festivals in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation make up a diverse landscape of complementary events whose influence and usefulness are undeniable on several levels. From a cultural point of view, they are more than ever broadcasting spaces that offer alternative cinematic experiences to formatted cinema and outside traditional circuits such as complexes and streaming sites.

Active in the fields of continuing education and pedagogy, they promote the 7th Art in all its plurality, are at the forefront of promoting Belgian films and artists to the Belgian public, and defend the cinema as a precious meeting place for both established authors and new talents seeking recognition.

Film festivals in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation add up to a total of :

• – Nearly 200 days of activity,
• – 1800 cinema screenings,
• – 850 events and peripheral activities,
• – 1400 Belgian and international film guests,
• – 340,000 festival-goers.

We work with over 1,400 structures of all types, and employ 650 private service providers in the hotel, catering, technical and communication sectors, among others, making us an integral part of the economy of our towns and regions.

In order to defend our specificity, reaffirm our place in the Belgian film ecosystem and create a broad forum for dialogue, we immediately set up a platform bringing together film festivals. We want to be active, constructive and useful to society, to the community, to other operators and to artists in our sector. We don’t just want to point out problems, we also want to provide ideas and solutions. This includes the crucial question of finding sources of funding that will enable us to continue to carry out our missions and develop our activities.

While it seems essential to us that a fair refinancing of film festival program-contracts (around 0.12% of the FWB’s culture budget) should take place in the near future, an in-depth reflection on private contributions should undoubtedly also be carried out. In this day and age, when a private company makes the estimable gesture of committing itself to supporting a cultural event such as a film festival, it must surely be encouraged by a more advantageous economic mechanism than currently exists.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve read and heard time and again that there will be a before and after Covid-19. We’ve read and heard that culture is an element of prime importance in our lives. We have read and heard commitments from our decision-makers. We hope to read and hear that there will be concrete, lasting perspectives and attention paid to the particularities of film festivals, to enable them to remain cultural players in tomorrow’s world.

Thank you for your kind attention. Yours faithfully

• Doris Cleven – Dominique Seutin / Festival Anima
• Nicole Gillet / Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur
• Aurélie Losseau / Brussels Mediterranean Film Festival
• Céline Masset / Brussels Short Film
• Festival Géraldine Cambron /Festival A Travers Champs
• Marie Vemeiren / Festival Elles Tournent
• Hilde Steenssens / Festival International de Cinéma Jeune Public Filem’on
• Jeanne Hebbelinck / Festival Imagésanté
• Sarah Pialeprat / Brussels Art Film Festival
• Pauline David / En Ville ! film festival
• Emilie Montagner / Festival Les Enfants Terribles
• Zlatina Rousseva / Millennium Festival
• Guy Delmote / Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival
• Maxime Dieu / Mons International Film Festival
• Pascal Hologne / Brussels International Film Festival
• Jean-Pierre Winberg / Tournai Ramdam Festival
• Adrien François / Liège International Comedy Film Festival
• Michel Grandmaison / Moustier Belgian Film Festival
• Cédric Monnoye / Liège International Detective Film Festival
• Wolfgang Kolb / International Dancefilmfestival Brussels
• Alban de Fraipont / Waterloo Historical Film Festival
• Jacques Paulus / Pink Screens Festival
• François Marache / Festival Courts mais Trash