On location: 11 hit movies that were filmed in Belgium

In Bruges (2008)
Ray and Ken (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) are hopeless Irish hitmen, hiding out in Bruges after a job goes wrong. Neither of them is happy about being in the tourist capital of Flanders and yet somehow this violent black comedy also becomes a love letter to the city. While Ray continues to complain bitterly (and to pick fights with American tourists), Ken is slowly converted to the charms of Bruges’ museums, canals and iconic locations such as the belfry. The city tourist board loved the attention so much that it published a walking tour of the film’s locations.

Les Géants (2011)
Dumped at their grandfather’s house in the deepest Ardennes, teenagers Seth and Zak (Martin Nissen, Zacharie Chasseriaud) hook up with local boy Dany (Paul Bartel) and go in search of distraction. Their quest turns out to be futile, their mood ever more miserable, but the landscape they move through is gorgeous. They joy-ride through lush green farmland under wide skies, they hike up steeply wooded hills and navigate broad, winding rivers. Even the Walloon scrapyards look tempting in the morning mist. In the end, the boys disappear into the landscape.

L’Enfant (2005)
The socially aware films of the Dardenne brothers are strongly rooted in Belgium’s industrial south-east, a landscape of present desolation and past industrial grandeur that often constrains their characters’ lives. In the Palme d’Or- winning L’Enfant, petty thief Bruno (Jérémie Renier) makes an ill-advised attempt to sell his newborn son, then struggles to deal with the consequences. As he crosses and re-crosses the town of Seraing, we see the idle factories along the banks of the river Meuse, the dead zones between roads and behind buildings, and the bland estates on which people live.

The Expatriate (2012)
Security consultant Ben Logan (Aaron Eckhart) is astonished when the multinational he works for in Antwerp disappears overnight, its offices closed and his colleagues killed. The trail leads to Brussels, but following it puts his teenage daughter (Liana Liberato) in the firing line. This cross between Taken and the Bourne films plays fast and loose with its Brussels locations, passing off streets (and tram lines!) from the capital as part of Antwerp. But it still delivers tense action sequences at Bourse metro, North station, the Hotel Metropole and the Justice Palace.

Groenten uit Balen (2011)
In 1971, the Belgian company Umicore was still called Vieille-Montagne. That year a large strike broke out in the company’s zinc factory in Balen, in the Campine region. The workers, many of whom lived in the old ‘cité’ near the factory, remained on strike for more than nine weeks, until the company management submitted to their demands. The heroic struggle was turned into this successful film. The zinc factory is still in operation, and the typical worker’s houses are still occupied.

Daughters of Darkness (1971)
This arthouse vampire film shows a darker side of Ostend, Belgium’s most famous seaside resort. Newlyweds Stefan and Valerie (John Karlen and Danielle Ouimet) miss the boat to England, so take a room in the luxurious Thermae Palace Hotel. Off- season, they have the place to themselves, until the sophisticated and eternally youthful Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) arrives, accompanied by her ‘secretary’ Ilone (Andrea Rau). The erotically charged game of cat and mouse that follows plays out in the shadows of the seafront’s neo-classical colonnade, on the moonlit beach and in the murk of the dunes just before dawn.

The White Queen (2013)
Outcompete the UK on heritage? Flanders did it. When the makers of the BBC TV series The White Queen were looking for a medieval setting for their story about England’s Wars of the Roses, they chose Belgian towns and cities like Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, Ronse and even little Rumbeke ahead of London. Ypres’ Saint Martin’s Cathedral stands in for Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London is found in both Bruges and Ghent, and the Royal Court of Westminster Palace is portrayed by Bruges’s gothic town hall.

The Commissioner (1998)
The idea that a pair of European Commissioners (played by John Hurt and Rosana Pastor) could roam around on their own, investigating an industrial conspiracy, is clearly ridiculous. Even so, this perfectly serious thriller still manages to capture the atmosphere of the EU quarter, from its glass towers full of offices to the ornate Baroque buildings where meetings are held. And behind the facades of the leafy residential avenues, there is the familiar echo of apartments with too much parquet and not enough furniture.

Belgica (2016)
Felix Van Groeningen’s Belgica is the latest success story in Belgian cinema. It won him the award for best director in the World Cinema Dramatic category at Sundance and the soundtrack by Soulwax even inspired Donatella Versace’s latest fashion show. The plot revolves around two brothers who open a bar, an obvious nod to legendary club Charlatan on the Vlasmarkt in Ghent. Most of the filming was done at nearby design gallery Design7.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
For this movie adaptation of the children’s bestseller of the same name, Tim Burton travelled to the affluent village of Brasschaat near Antwerp. The book’s author, Ransom Riggs, used Villa Nottebohm in nearby Brecht as inspiration for his tale about a mysterious orphanage, but in the end, 19th-century castle Torenhof was used as a location. Part of the cast, including Samuel Jackson, were rumoured to have spent the night in town while filming.

Emperor (2016)
The yet-to-be-released action epic stars Adrien Brody as Charles V and the city of Ghent as the backdrop for a 16th-century revenge story brimming with sex and violence. Part of the medieval city centre around the Korenlei was completely closed off to the public during filming in August last year. Mayor Daniël Termont called the movie one big commercial for Ghent, the place where emperor Charles was born in 1500.

This article first appeared in The Bulletin Best of Belgium 2016