Sabzian is an international film magazine, hailing from Belgium.Sabzian est une revue de cinéma internationale, originaire de Belgique.Sabzian is een internationaal filmtijdschrift, afkomstig uit België.
Sabzian is a free online magazine that relies on the work of a group of dedicated volunteers. We could use your support. Please consider a donation! Sabzian est un magazine en ligne gratuit qui dépend du travail d’un groupe de bénévoles dévoués. Votre soutien nous aide beaucoup. Pensez à faire un don ! Sabzian is een gratis online magazine dat afhankelijk is van het werk van een groep toegewijde vrijwilligers. We kunnen uw steun goed gebruiken. Overweeg een donatie!
People Passing Through Me in an Endless Procession
28.01.2026
A COLLECTION OF
7 texts, 4 film pages, 1 event, 1 news item,
NL FR EN
An artist and engraver, Frans van de Staak (1943–2001) first encountered the power of cinema in a sequence from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert. He went on to enrol in film school and founded CINEECRI, a journal he distributed himself. Using grant money earned through graphic design, he made a series of short films in the 1970s that laid the groundwork for his cinema: early attempts to transpose texts by writers such as Korneliszoon Poot and Spinoza to the screen. Rather than striving for faithful reproduction, he filmed amateur actors in their effort to give voice to the text, judging takes more by ear than by eye.
07.01.2026
A COLLECTION OF
9 texts, 21 film pages, 1 event, 2 news items,
NL FR EN
The year 2025 marked the mournful fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini. After his death, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a passionate plea for him, warning against the posthumous moralisation and simplification of his oeuvre, which he considered a threat to the radical complexity of his work and his person. “Do not pass judgement on Pasolini,” he wrote, “do not render harmless what was never meant to be harmless.” This collection of texts follows Sabzian’s recent publication WHO IS ME, a Dutch translation of Pasolini’s posthumous autobiographical text Poeta delle ceneri [Poet of the Ashes]. In that text, Pasolini writes: “No artist in any country is ever free. An artist is a living objection.” In that spirit, this collection gathers several texts on Sabzian dedicated to Pasolini’s films, his writings and his lasting legacy.
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This Week’s Agenda
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Whether you love it or loathe it, Valentine’s week brings a batch of love stories with it. As always, we offer three films that mark the occasion in their own way. We open the week with Certain Women (2016), screening as part of the Kelly Reichardt retrospective at Flagey, on the occasion of the Belgian release of her new film, The Mastermind. Set in the small towns and wide landscapes of Montana, the film follows the quiet lives of three women whose paths barely cross. Reichardt observes routine with patience: unlit roads, repetitive work, conversations that falter rather than resolve. In the final vignette, a ranch hand played by Lily Gladstone falls in love with Beth (Kristen Stewart), a young lawyer teaching a night class. She deviates subtly from her everyday life, opening a small fissure in the film’s careful order. Montana itself, with its mountains and plains, frames these lives marked by restraint, dignity and small, unspoken desires.
Monokino’s pick for Valentine’s Day is Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982), an adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest. The film presents a colourful port city, full of desire and ritualised violence. Homosexuality is linked to transgression without moral judgement, echoing Genet’s fascination with extremes. Fassbinder, however, does not offer transcendence: Querelle’s sculpted posture and deliberate control resist social pressure, but this resistance leads to solitude rather than liberation. As Oscar Wilde writes in The Ballad of Reading Gaol, “each man kills the thing he loves.” In Querelle, love, betrayal, and identity are intertwined.
The week closes with Agnès Varda’s Jacquot de Nantes, her tribute to her husband, Jacques Demy. The film depicts Demy’s childhood and early experiments with cinema, blending black-and-white images with bursts of colour. She uses clips from Demy’s films, while his occasional presence on screen adds quiet poignancy. Jacquot de Nantes is a personal farewell and a loving gesture from one artist to another.
Belgian Premieres and Festivals
Each month, Sabzian lists upcoming Belgian premieres, releases and festivals.
In Theatres
Next Weeks
