Milano (2024)

What happens after years of making documentaries? For Christina Vandekerckhove, who made waves in 2017 with Rabot, a powerful documentary about the last residents of three social housing towers, the answer is that certain real-life encounters, situations, and people linger in your mind. "They became the spark for Milano," Vandekerckhove admitted in 2023. "The rest is imagination." In her fiction debut - though her award-winning short films Mia and Stella were early steps in this direction - the Ghent filmmaker focuses on Alain (played by Matteo Simoni), a single father raising his deaf son Milano (newcomer Basil Wheatley) in a social housing neighborhood. As Alain strives to create a better life for his 11-year-old son, their relationship is strained when Milano expresses a desire to meet his biological mother and finds support in a wealthy neighbor. Milano is an emotional and poetic exploration of parenthood and friendship, blending the rawness of reality with the sensitivity of fiction.