IFFR Film Special: Charlie and Hannah's Grand Night Out

Belgian director/screenwriter Bert Scholiers jumps all over the place in his imaginative feature debut. One moment we are in an Antwerp pub, the next we are walking across an expanse of snow, then in a cosmic black hole or chasing a flying pineapple. This is how best friends Charlie and Hannah’s drink-fuelled night pans out after swallowing a magical sweet that changes the world surrealistically – also for everyone around them.

The laconic twenty-somethings respond to these events with amused amazement (whether they wind up in a pre-war brothel or are blown to smithereens by an atom bomb), all the while sauntering along and discussing the really important stuff: dealing with exes and relationships. Like a tripping Woody Allen or Noah Baumbach, Scholiers plays with form, using inventive visual humour, colour and black-and-white, switching aspect ratios and referring to silent movies and Italian giallo horror.!