Julian

Won 4 Ensors: Best Film, Best Leading Role (Laurence Roothooft), Best Director (Cato Kusters), Best Screenplay (Cato Kusters & Angelo Tijssens).

Two women, madly in love with each other, want to get married in every country where it is permitted. But despite Fleur’s amazing organisational skills and a successful start, the couple encounters an obstacle that neither of them could have foreseen. Cato Kusters’s debut feature film is a powerful story full of beauty, warmth, and emotion that is still very relevant today.

With great sensitivity, Kusters tells a story that is much bigger than cinema alone. At a time when LGBTQIA+ rights are under pressure worldwide, JULIAN is an authentic advocate for humanity. Kusters found inspiration in the memoirs of writer, artist, and activist Fleur Pierets, who started a performance art project with her partner Julian P. Boom in 2017 and set off on a world tour of love through 22 countries.

Kusters had actresses Nina Meurisse and Laurence Roothooft shoot footage themselves with an old camcorder. The images speak the language of memory, and just like in our minds (and the original novel), the present and the past merge into one another. Kusters allows her controversial debut to slowly wander from the present to memory, from memory to melancholy.