Honored Guest of the 26th Arras Film Festival (2025)
Friday, November 14, 2025
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM: Film Masterclass at the University of Artois
The director will visit Arras on Friday, November 14, for the traditional film masterclass at the University of Artois, held from 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM as part of the L’Université pour tous lecture series. The discussion will be moderated by Lily Bloom, host of the show "Le Cercle" on Canal+.
“Arras’s two grand squares strike me as theater sets, painted backdrops. In fact, they almost are sets—every façade was completely rebuilt after the 1914 war. As a Belgian, I truly feel at home here.” — Lucas Belvaux
With Not My Type (Pas son genre, 2014), he captured Arras like no other, giving the late Émilie Dequenne what is arguably her finest role. Through the love story between a philosophy professor and a hairdresser, he painted a luminous, sensitive portrait of the city—both realistic and poetic—revealing the quiet beauty of its streets and people.
This deep attention to place and character perfectly encapsulates Belvaux’s craft: a cinema rooted in reality, attuned to social nuances and human emotions.
Born in Namur in 1961, Lucas Belvaux is one of those Belgians who have become fixtures in French cultural life. At 18, he moved to Paris to pursue acting. After just a few months of drama classes, he landed his first film role in Allons z’enfants (1981) by Yves Boisset. His acting career flourished with prestigious collaborations, working under directors like Claude Chabrol (Poulet au vinaigre), Jacques Rivette (Hurlevent), and Olivier Assayas (Désordre).
In the 1990s, Belvaux turned to directing. Following a modest debut with Parfois trop d’amour and the well-received vaudeville Pour rire! (1996), he burst onto the cinematic scene in 2001 with an ambitious trilogy—Un couple épatant, Cavale, and Après la vie. These three films interweave the same events, each told through a different genre: comedy, crime, and drama. This bold project earned him the Prix Louis-Delluc that same year.
Since then, Lucas Belvaux has continued to build a deeply humanist body of work: La Raison du plus faible (2006), Rapt (2009), Chez nous (2017), and Des hommes (2021) examine contemporary society with rare precision. In 2022, he published his first novel, Les Tourmentés, which he later adapted for the screen himself. The film was released in theaters on September 17.
