André Demester secretly and painfully loves Barbe, his childhood friend, accepting from her the little that she gives him. He leaves home to be a soldier in a war in a far off land. Barbarity, camaraderie and fear turn him into a warrior. As the seasons go by, Barbe, alone and wasting away, waits for the soldiers to return. Will Demester’s boundless love for Barbe save him?
Acting
Non-professional cast delivers devastating emotional rawness.
Direction
Dumont's detached gaze makes horror feel inevitable, almost biblical.
Cinematography
Flanders fields vs. desert warfare: two hells, one indifferent sky.
Director
Bruno Dumont
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Dumont explicitly set out to destroy the romantic war film; Flanders won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2006 while critics walked out.
The unnamed war was shot in Bulgaria standing in for Afghanistan/Iraq, but Dumont refused specificity—barbarism is barbarism, geography irrelevant.
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