Brecht Debackere

Nostalgia for the Future

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Director Brecht Debackere Music (original) Rutger Zuydervelt, Niels Borrey Cast Charlotte Rampling, Chris Marker

On the Edge Docs Belgian Cinema Today

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Edition 2026

Artists on Film

75' - 2026 - Avant-Garde / Experimental, Documentary - Format: DCP - Dialogue: English

Who was Chris Marker, really? The enigmatic filmmaker behind La Jetée spent a lifetime hiding behind pseudonyms, images and cats. In Nostalgia for the Future, Brecht Debackere dives into his vast archive, with Charlotte Rampling as his guide. An idiosyncratic, essayistic journey through Marker’s legacy and what images preserve of us after we are gone.

Saturday October

14:15 Kinepolis 6 Subtitles: Dutch - French

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Sunday October

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19:45 Kinepolis 9 Subtitles: Dutch - French

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Monday October

14:30 KASKcinema Subtitles: Dutch - French

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Thursday October

14:30 KASKcinema Subtitles: Dutch - French

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Chris Marker disliked portraits. The French filmmaker behind La Jetée and Sans Soleil was rarely photographed, worked under pseudonyms and was quite happy to be represented by the image of a cat. After his death, however, he left behind a staggering archive. In Nostalgia for the Future, an archivist wanders through this material legacy in search of the man who spent his entire life carefully keeping himself out of sight. For eight years, Belgian artist and filmmaker Brecht Debackere immersed himself in Marker’s world. Guided by the enigmatic voice of Charlotte Rampling, he allows photographs, writings and film fragments to speak once again. The result is not a conventional artist portrait, but an idiosyncratic cinematic puzzle in which past and present constantly intertwine. For how much of a person truly remains in their images? And can those images, as Marker himself so often did, look towards the future?