Lukas Dhont was in a Manhattan hotel lobby the morning the Oscar nominations were announced. Being in a public place helped calm his nerves as he waited to find out if his gentle and observant film “Close,” which has garnered acclaim since winning second place in the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival last May, it would be nominated for Best International Film.
The news was very good. “I must say that I didn’t sleep well,” the 31-year-old Belgian director told TheWrap. “It’s all a weird thing. You try to get as many people as possible to see your film, but it’s also stressful waiting to see if we get nominated. But from the moment I heard the name of our movie, I jumped and screamed a bit. I hope I didn’t scare anyone at the hotel.
He added: “To receive recognition of this magnitude is an enormous gift that I do not take lightly. I know how many movies there are, this year and every year, that don’t have this privilege.”
“Close” is the eighth Belgian film nominated in the international category. It would be the first from Belgium to win. The story is about the experience of a 13-year-old boy named Léo (newcomer Eden Dambrine) who loses his best friend.
“This is a movie where we confront the expectations placed on many of us as teenagers,” Dhont said. “It’s a film about friendship and masculinity. And mental health too, and I feel like a conversation about that topic is necessary. So hopefully with this nomination, that conversation can be even bigger now.”
The movie, which is distributed by A24, opens this weekend in select theaters. Dhont is looking forward to the reaction of the American public, and not just because one of his early inspirations for the script was the American professor Niobe Way and his book on adolescents and friendship, “Deep Secrets”.
“Hearing audiences talk about their experience with the film is how I reconnect with why we made it in the first place,” Dhont said. “It’s been a very energizing and powerful thing to meet all these people I’ve never met before. And how they revive their own young friendships through the film. Or face a feeling of regret for their childhood that they have carried with them but have never expressed.
After the Oscar nominations were announced, following a brief celebration in the hotel lobby, Dhont also called out the young stars of his film, Dambrine and Gustav De Waele, who were finishing up the school day in Belgium.
“They were living that moment collectively with their classroom,” Dhont said. “I think all those young people jumped up and cheered. So I was happy that they were able to take my call, because this has been an emotional thing for them as well. For these guys, who have given these amazing performances without ever acting before, it’s a life-changing experience.”
Dhont intends to take his cast with him to the Academy Awards in March. “And that’s the thing. Now they also realize they are going to the Oscars. He begins to assimilate. We are all very excited.”
Since its premiere at Cannes last year, Dhont has also been able to meet other filmmakers throughout the busy awards campaign. It is an experience that he treasures.
There is a real sense of camaraderie, because we are all going through the same thing,” he said. “And of course we were all campaigning to be nominated, but it’s also really about the human connections along the way. I have been able to meet the team that made ‘Argentina 1985’ the team that made ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. These are great, radical, and very different movies.”
Those two movies, along with “EO” and “The Quiet Girl,” were also Oscar nominated. But Dhont stressed that several of the films that touched him most deeply were the ones that didn’t make the final five.
“Today I’m also thinking of Ali Abbasi, who did ‘Holy Spider,’ and Marie Kreutzer, who did ‘Corsage,’ and Park Chan-wook, who did ‘Decision to Leave,’ and Alice Diop, who did ‘Saint Omer.’ he enthused. “These are some of the movies that touched my heart and really impacted me this year.”
Dhont mentioned that he’s also a big fan of Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun,” which garnered a Best Actor nomination for Paul Mescal. And he recalls his experience of seeing Ruben Östlund’s comedy “Triangle of Sadness,” winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and now nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, in a packed movie theater.
“When I saw ‘Triangle of Sadness’ in Ghent, Belgium, I was so overjoyed that I saw it in a packed theater, feeling the huge waves of laughter and disgust in the audience. And feel that shared experience of one piece. Whatever it is, be it dance, opera, music or film, there is real power in watching it together. Sometimes we go around the world looking at our own little screens and separated from each other. We can forget how important connection is. It’s very important to remember that.”
In a more nuanced way than robust, heartwarming films like “Avatar” or “Top Gun,” little “Close” is also a movie that benefits greatly from the cinematic experience.
“I’m a big believer in what the Greeks call catharsis,” Dhont said. “When I write, I always keep in mind this possibility of experiencing something collectively and how we can see the world and ourselves in a different way. Due to the pandemic, we all had to experience separate moments, especially watching movies. And I think that experiencing emotions of joy and laughter or deep sadness or pain is incredibly powerful when we do it together. And cinema offers the power of that connection.”