INTERNATIONAL CURRENTS
Set in Brussels, Here revolves around a potential love story between a Romanian construction worker and a Belgian-Chinese doctorate student of moss, who cross paths just before the former is about to move back home.
In the decade since the premiere of his debut feature, Violet (2014), Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos has quietly become an important voice in European art cinema. Ghost Tropic (2019), his previous film, was released in the States to strong reviews, but he seems poised for a breakthrough with Here, the first of his films to be selected for the main slate of the New York Film Festival.
Devos's work is quiet, contemplative, and observational--it could be categorized as part of the 21st-century "slow cinema" movement--but it's never boring. Here is a good old-fashioned romance with a classic meet-cute between two charismatic leads (Stefan Gota is a star in the making). It's also a smart and timely study of two of the infinite variety of immigrant experiences that are reshaping our communities.