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Enterprising Flemish broadcaster VRT has boarded the historical coming-of-age drama series ‘King of Hearts’ from Giles Coulier, whose company, De Wereldvrede, is behind such hits as 2019 series “War of the Worlds” and Prix Europa winner, “Albatros.”

As continental royalty series hit ratins and sales – think “Maxima” – “King of Hearts,” currently in development, has been selected to participate in the inaugural Euro-Atlantic Co-Pro Pitch program to be held at the Iberseries & Platino Industria confab in Madrid.

Based on real events, the drama centers on Baudouin, introverted and insecure, who is made King before he is ready for the task. As Belgium descends into crisis and his family fractures around him, he is forced to confront the man and leader he wants to become. Under mounting pressure, he learns to make difficult choices, challenge his father’s influence and forge his own beliefs. But with power comes a darker temptation: to control others as he himself was once controlled.

Later in life, he tries to protect his nephew Filip from the same painful path he went through. But he slowly realizes how hard it is to become a better man than the father who raised him.

“We are thrilled we can once again work on a fiction series that sheds light on an important chapter in our recent history. As a public broadcaster, we believe it is essential to tell these stories, but always through emotionally compelling, surprising and strong storytelling,” said Elly Vervloet, VRT international drama expert.

“’King of Hearts is the coming-of-age story of King Baudouin, who, as a young and unprepared prince, had to ascend the throne at a politically very delicate moment for our country and the whole world. We see him struggle to find his own voice, torn between power and responsibility, manipulated by people around him with their own agendas. We are thrilled that the producers and creators of De Wereldvrede approached us with this story, so that we can develop it further together into an ambitious and emotionally resonant series. We hope to bring some strong international partners on board to bring this fascinating story to audiences far beyond Belgium.”

For producer Gilles De Schryver, who co-founded De Wereldvrede with Coulier in 2013, “King of Hearts” is by nature an international story. “It moves between Brussels, Leopoldville, Rome and Madrid, intertwining Belgium’s monarchy with Congolese independence, Cold War geopolitics and Catholic influence. It is designed as a high-value prestige drama with global story reach and appeal only an international co-production can deliver.”

The project has secured script funding from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), with a further VAF application pending.

According to the partners, De Wereldvrede’s “mission is to produce high-quality fiction for an international market, with a strong emphasis on the creator’s vision and a bottom-up production approach.”

The company broke through with the TV series “The Natives” (CANVAS), followed by Coulier’s feature film “Cargo,” which screened at numerous international festivals. Their short films have also earned recognition, including “Stephanie,” an official Cannes selection and winner of the Ensor for Best Short Film, and the series “Lockdown,” which won an award at Canneseries. “Roomies” (2022) received international acclaim.

In 2024, the features “Holy Rosita” and “Julie Keeps Quiet” premiered internationally, earning numerous festival selections and awards. “Julie Keeps Quiet” premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week and was selected as Belgium’s official Oscar entry. Both films won five Ensor Awards.

In October 2025, the second season of “Roomies,” by Kato De Boeck and Flo Van Deuren, premiered at Film Fest Gent to five-star reviews.

Nathalie Teirlinck’s second feature, “Jonah Was Here,” is currently in post-production, while Pieter Van Hees’ latest film, “Alors on Danse,” is in advanced development and scheduled to shoot in summer 2027.

De Wereldvrede is also developing several other projects, including the feature films “Harvest,” “The Right to Say Goodbye” and “Dirty Kids,” as well as the fiction series “Recidive” and “Beats of Love.”

The 6^th Iberseries & Platino Industria runs September 29 to October 2, 2026.

The title of “Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing” is the closest that Erik Shirai‘s documentary comes to a joke at the expense of its subject: sumo wrestling, the Japanese sport largely known in the western world for the ample size and minimal clothing of its practitioners, and not an awful lot beyond that. In all other respects, however, this stately, artfully produced film aims to act as a corrective to such cheap, culturally insensitive perceptions. Examining as it does the motivations and ambitions of a number of sumo wrestlers, from grand masters to rising stars, through a solemnly respectful lens, the doc finds humanity and even beauty in what can all too easily be comically framed on screen.

Indeed, the approach of Japanese-American docmaker Shirai (who previously probed a very different Japanese institution in his popular 2015 doc “The Birth of Saké”) is so respectful as to feel a touch sanitized: smoothed-out and simplified for the benefit of Western viewers, to whose perspective the film is mostly tailored. More unsavory aspects of the sport — including controversies over hazing and match-fixing, not to mention its ongoing exclusion of women from competition and ceremonies — are swept aside, while the compelling fact of its declining popularity in Japan is only passingly addressed. Only before the closing credits roll is it revealed how few yokozuna (the name given to men achieving the highest rank in sumo) this century have been homegrown, as Mongolia and the U.S. step into the breach.

Shedding more light on such matters would provide a richer context for the film’s reverent celebration of sumo tradition, but many viewers will still find it an illuminating and exquisitely mounted study, ennobling the sport with the sheer, studied splendor of its imagery, captured alternately in atmospherically high-contrast monochrome and tea-stained sepia tones. Produced by ESPN Films, it will doubtless find a dedicated broadcast and streaming viewership following its premiere as the opening film of Venice’s audience-oriented Spotlight competition.

Early on, the camera observes a group of rookie wrestlers, training at the Tokyo stable of 62-year-old Master Sakaigawa, as they collectively recite a pledge to the sport: “We shall uphold our responsibility and duty to to sumo; we shall uphold a strong heart, kindness and courage.” This is followed by a droll shot of trainees all putting their freshly laundered thongs out to dry: For all its earnestness, the film is not without offhand humor. In the house of Sakaigawa, we meet Hiradoumi, a 24-year-old upstart tipped for big things in the ring (or dohyō, to use its proper term), and a great hope for continued Japanese representation in the sport’s top tier. In the same stable, and younger still, is teenager Yonezawaryu, still learning the ropes, and battling doubts over his long-term commitment to sumo after witnessing firsthand the extreme, potentially fatal, physical toll it takes on the body.

At the opposite end of the career scale is Mongolian-born Terunofuji, who at the time of filming was the only practicing yokozuna in sumo, a 10-time title winner considering retirement after 14 years in the sport, five of them at the very top. He is spoken of as a veteran, positively godly in status, though he’s only 33 years old. Age, however, doesn’t mean quite what it does to civilians in a realm where so much transformational strain is placed on the body, and Terunofuji’s is beginning to fail him. “By doing sumo, I’m cutting my lifespan by 10 to 20 years,” he frankly admits, before likening the travails of the professional wrestler to those of a soldier going to war. He’s now married with a son — it’s hard not to wonder if, at the end of his reign, he thinks it was all worth it.

It’s one of a few questions that this handsome, sober documentary is too polite to ask. But it does convey the grand, challenging physicality of sumo, which to many of its students qualifies as an answer in itself. There’s also a thoughtful focus here on the pain and labor that goes into building and maintaining these extraordinary bodies — shot, by Shirai and fellow DP Hiroshi Hara, in awed chiaroscuro portraits that line up with the men’s view of themselves as warriors of a kind, leaving far behind many racist, cartoonish depictions of yore.