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The making of Valentijn
Valentijn by Samuel Faict (Belgium) won a 4-star award at BIAFF 2008
Starting With Suspense
 From the very beginning my film is full of suspense. It is
based on a story, an urban legend.
A lady has run out of petrol and she stops her car at an isolated garage. The service man looks very strange. Without explanation he tries to tug the lady out of her car, but she resists. Afterwards we learn that he only wanted to protect her because in the backseat of the vehicle there is a man with a knife. Eventually the lady is killed. But why? I tried to expand and develop the story in my own way. |
 I found inspiration in a crazy Flemish comic. The principal
character is a man called Urban. His mother dies on the wind vane of a church.
Her organs are transplanted in the bodies of other women. Urban calls God
and asks him if his Mum can rise from the dead. God tells him that every
organ must die first. This story gave me some ideas to use in
Valentijn.
So it has become a story about a man who comes back to collect all his organs. They have been taken out of his body in a wrongful way. |
 I gave every character a special role:
|
 This last thing is based on an event that really happened in
a family of Jehovah's witnesses. They were climbing in the mountains. Their
child had an accident. A blood transfusion was urgent, but the parents refused.
The guide knocked down the father and mother. He helped the child with his
first aid kit and gave new blood. Afterwards they didn't want their child
anymore. The transfusion was against their beliefs. People have told me that
Jehovah's witnesses don't worship icons. They think it is a mistake that
in my film the mother's house has many crosses and so on. But I am not referring
to a particular religious group. In the film I only mean to indicate people
with extreme religious beliefs in general. |
  In my film I sought to clarify
the real feelings of the woman, the mother, in a special way. She remembers
everything very clearly. Flashes of scenes of today suddenly change into
scenes from the past. In this way I ensure that the viewer will sympathise with
the mother.
In my story Richards ends up in the house of Valentine's mother… in the spider's web. At the very end of the story both Richard and the audience understand what had really happened. I maintained the tension until the very last moment. |
| Feedback is Essential
I worked on the scenario for six months. It was a period of writing and rewriting all the time. I think it is necessary to give your scenario to at least two different people for comment and to listen to them. Feedback is very essential. A great film crew is also very important. I am very grateful to them. I would have never been able to make this film without their help and their ideas. |
This is my first major film and
I learnt quite a lot. Every detail was important to me and I was very critical
when working out the story.
- Samuel Faict
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