Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #106. Veerle Baetens’ When It Melts

Published on January 12, 2023

When It Melts

Belgian actress Veerle Baetens (best known for The Broken Circle Breakdown and Mothers’ Instinct) moved behind the camera for her directorial debut on a project that was getting terrific buzz (plus Prix ARTE Kino Intl. coin) before it even went into production. A book-to-film adaptation based on Lize Spit’s Het Smelt — When It Melts is a film that highlights loneliness, burying the pain and as Baetens illustrates … it is the quiet people who have the loudest minds. Rosa Marchant and Charlotte De Bruyne share the same character and….the same traumas. Savage Films’ Bart Van Langendonck (Racer and the Jailbird) is producing.

Gist: This follows a woman who returns to her small Flemish hometown 13 years after a pivotal summer with her best friends, to come to terms with past traumas.

Release Date/Prediction: This was selected to compete in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance. We expect more film festival play to follow.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).