Belgian filmmaker Michiel Blanchart on His Action Thriller ‘Night Call’ Set Amid Black Lives Matter Protest in Belgium
variety.comBen Croll A restless spirit with a roving imagination, Belgian filmmaker Michiel Blanchart, developed his feature debut “Night Call” while ever on the move. “I go crazy when sitting behind a desk,” he tells Variety at the Nouvelles Vagues Festival in Biarritz, France, where the movie had its world premiere this week. “I can’t just get up from the couch and open my computer, because nothing would come out.
Instead I followed a routine, walking across Brussels for an hour or two each day, heading from my home to the production office waiting for inspiration to strike — and if it didn’t, I’d turn around and walk for another hour or two.
In the end, 80% of the film’s locations derived from that route.” Blanchart, who will next adapt his award-winning short “You’re Dead Helene” into an English-language feature produced by Sam Raimi and TriStar Pictures, approached his inaugural feature from the outside in.
He pooled as much from an unremarkable daily grind – the heartbreak, the nightlife, the odd quirks and architectural eccentricities he noticed of his hometown – as from the pop spectacle of Hollywood showmen.
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