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BXL

Despite all of the movie’s good intentions BXL is a message in search of a movie to build around it, and when the message is this forced and unnuanced, it would be foolish to expect a decent film.



I’ve studied, lived and worked in Brussels for most of my adult life. I know its challenges all too well and have seen first-hand how volatile and toxic the city’s frustrating social model can be, specifically for those with ethnically diverse roots. Yet while I see snippets of that Brussels and its citizens in new Belgian film BXL, the picture lacks believable insight into the city’s complex problems.


BXL is at heart a tale of two brothers: the elder one an aspiring MMA fighter dreaming about a big break in the USA, the younger one a teenager who just wants to fit in. Both harbour traumas that could derail their hopes and dreams at any given moment, which should have yielded for poignant, emotional drama. Unfortunately that’s a promise BXL never delivers on.


The reasons are multiple, but the most obvious one is a the screenplay that is a collection of platitudes and clichés about growing up in the big bad city. Sibling writer-directors Ish and Monir Ait Hamou fashion a tale that could have been transplanted to any city, in any time period and thereby mostly ignore what should have been their USP: Brussels’ quaint, foreboding peculiarity.


The picture also isn’t helped by performances that fail to convince. Not only are the younger members of the cast allowed to overact to a frustrating degree, the adult actors struggle for a coherent tone, with the possible exception of Geert Van Rampelberg. Visually the Ait Hamou brothers mix occasional inspired set-ups with mundane sequences not far removed from middling TV dramas.


But BXL’s biggest flaw – its unforgivable sin, I’d even call it – is the message it builds up to. Trying to say something meaningful about how extremism is slowly, almost unnoticeably nourished, is hard at the best of times, but the irritatingly simplistic, woefully predictable, narratively cheap ending BXL serves up is a stinker that wipes away any pretence of thematic heft or emotional resonance.



release: 2025

director: Ish Ait Hamou, Monir Ait Hamou

starring: Fouad Hajji, Yassir Drief, Geert Van Rampelberg, Ruth Becquart

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