Belgian director Lukas Dhont's film "Girl" nominated for Golden Globe

21/12/2018

Lukas Dhont has received the ultimate accolade: his debut feature film “Girl " has been nominated for a Golden Globe in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Since being selected in 2018 for "Un certain regard" and after winning the Caméra d’Or in Cannes, as well as the Queer Palm and the Best Actor Award for Victor Polster, the film's lead actor, "Girl" has gone on to win a slew of awards at Belgian and international festivals. Most recently, the film was nominated for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Awards. They are regarded as the most prestigious film awards, along with the Oscars. The awards ceremony will take place on 6 January. "I'm very honoured to be nominated along with these other great directors," said an elated Lukas Dhont in the Flanders Audiovisual Fund's press release. 

"Girl" tells the story of a 15-year old girl, called Lara, who is born in the body of a boy, but dreams of becoming a ballerina. With the support of his father, the adolescent undergoes transgender hormone therapy in anticipation of sex reassignment surgery. But the slow pace of the hormone treatment frustrates Lara, who is forced to be patient while finding it more and more difficult to deal with her body dysphoria and genitals which she tries desperately to forget.

The film was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike because it escapes the pitfall of a film with a topic that might take over everything. Dhont, however, goes to great lengths to recreate the daily life and gestures of his heroine, filming wonderful scenes in which the family's intimacy and the complicity between a father and his children are emphasised. And that is what makes Lara's dream of a transformation so credible and so right.

Dhont is not the only Belgian to be nominated for a Golden Globe: “Beautiful Boy", the first Hollywood film of the director Felix Van Groeningen is also in the running, following the nomination of actor Timothée Chalamet in the supporting actor category.