Belgian filmmaker Michael R. Roskam is reuniting with the team behind Bullhead and Racer And The Jailbird for wartime feature Le Faux Soir, set to star regular collaborator Matthias Schoenaerts.
Set in 1943, it tells the story of when the Belgian resistance secretly produced a spoof version of the country’s leading newspaper, Le Soir, which had become a propaganda tool of the occupying Nazi forces.
Schoenaerts, who starred in Roskam’s Oscar-nominated Bullhead and was more recently seen in David O Russell’s Amsterdam, is set to play the Belgian resistance hero. Cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis, whose US credits include Cruella, will make his fourth feature collaboration with Roskam.
“It’s a contemporary and very relevant subject about free speech, free press and people having the liberty to say and think and laugh at everything they want,” Roskam said of the film. It echoes Charlie Hebdo in so many ways. These men were willing to risk their lives in order to make people laugh.
Jean-Yves Roubin’s Liege based Frakas Productions is producing the $8 million project. Roubin will be discussing the project at the EFM this Wednesday. Bart Van Langendonck’s Savage Film, which worked on Bullhead and Racer And The Jailbird, will co-produce. The film will be shot in late 2023/early2024.
Le Soir10, which is still one of Belgium’s most prominent newspapers, will also support it.
Roskam has recently completed the screenplay. In time for Cannes, a sales agent will be appointed.
Roskam spoke in Berlin this weekend to reveal that he is still working on his long-gestating biopic about Sylvia Kristel (2049), who was the original person behind the idea.
