Meisje

In MEISJE, Dorothée Van den Berghe sensitively portrays three women from different generations, each searching in her own way for meaning and freedom. Shy twenty-year-old Muriel (Charlotte Vanden Eynde) still lives in her hometown, leading a predictable life and working side by side in a factory with her nearly sixty-year-old mother. When her desire for change becomes impossible to ignore, she moves to the city. There, she rents a room from Laura (Els Dottermans), a young woman struggling with her own longing for stability and family life. What begins as a step toward independence soon confronts Muriel with the limits of her sheltered upbringing and her own insecurities.

MEISJE is a coming-of-age story about identity, letting go, and the complex bond between mothers and daughters. We screen Dorothée Van den Berghe’s 2002 feature debut on 35mm, courtesy of CINEMATEK.

The film will be introduced (in Dutch) by Girls on Film and Dorothée Van den Berghe. After the screening, an interactive conversation (in Dutch) follows with Girls on Film, Van den Berghe (founder of WANDA), and De Cinema coordinator Joyce Palmers, addressing female representation in the Flemish film field and the challenges and opportunities of filmmaking, then and now. The discussion is part of SPOTLIGHT ON WOMXN DIRECTORS. In the same spirit as WANDA, which supports and amplifies women directors in Flanders, SPOTLIGHT foregrounds alternative voices and perspectives while questioning the dominant canon. Film history is not fixed: this edition highlights debut filmmakers and pioneers who reshaped cinematic language and production contexts, yet too often disappeared from view.