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Exclusive: WTFilms has unveiled a slew of deals on Fabrice du Welz’s thriller Maldoror, inspired by the 1990s case of infamous Belgian pedophile and serial killer Marc Dutroux, as the movie releases in France ahead of its theatrical launch in Belgium next week.

In Europe, the movie has sold to the Nordics (Njutafilms), German-speaking territories (Capelight Pictures), Italy (Movies Inspired), Spain (La Aventura), Poland (Velvet Soon), Cis, Baltics, Ukraine (Exponenta), and Greece (Femeway Limited).

In the rest of the world, Film Movement has taken U.S. rights while the picture has also sold to Japan (Pflug) and Latin America (California).

The Jokers Films, which also produced the movie with Belgian company Frakas, has launched Maldoror theatrically in France today while O’Brother Distribution is gearing up for its release in Belgium on January 22. Gusto Entertainment has a set an April launch for the Netherlands.

The thriller is inspired by the...

Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz brings us back to 1995 with Maldoror, drawing loose inspiration from the harrowing Marc Dutroux case that rocked his home country. Two young girls have gone missing in Charleroi under murky circumstances, with the police investigation stalled. Enter earnest rookie officer Paul Chartier, assigned to the secretive Maldoror task force tailing chief suspect Marcel Dedieu.

Played with compelling intensity by Anthony Bajon, Chartier throws himself into the case with a determination bordering on obsession. As leads dry up and his superiors counsel patience, frustration mounts in our headstrong protagonist. Offscreen parallels to real failings of the Belgian authorities only fuel Chartier’s crusade for justice. But with corruption proving more deeply rooted than expected, how far will he go to challenge the damaging status quo?

Du Welz establishes a brooding atmosphere through unflinching depictions of a societal ill far graver than initially meets the eyes. Bajon...

Belgium is approaching the 30th anniversary of the start of a dark chapter in its history in which pedophile Marc Dutroux abducted six young girls from June 1995 to August 1996.

Imprisoning them in the basement of his house in the former coal-mining town of Marcinelle, the convicted sex offender tortured and sexually abused his young victims, killing four of them.

Mélissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, who were just eight years old, died of starvation and dehydration, while An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, were buried alive. Sabine Dardenne, 12, and Laetitia Delhez, 14, were freed following Dutroux’s arrest in August 1996.

In a bold cinematic move, Belgian director Fabrice du Welz revisits the case in high-octane crime thriller Maldoror, which weaves in details of the real affair with the fictitious journey of a young police officer played by Anthony Bajon.

“I was about 20 when the Marc Dutroux Affair broke in Belgium,...

Anthony Bajon in Maldoror. Fabrice du Welz: 'Believe me, it's very close to the case' Photo: Sofia Gheysens The latest film from Belgian director Fabrice du Welz is a crime thriller that draws on the real case of serial killer Marc Dutroux, and the scandal that surrounded it with regard to the way the police handled the case. Maldoror adopts the perspective of young police officer Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon). About to be married to Gina (Alba Gaïa Bellugi), Paul, who is volatile as a result of his troubled past, becomes increasingly obssessed with a case in which two girls have been abducted. The film premiered in Venice, and is currently on the festival circuit, stopping off in London, Beyond Fest and Sitges. We caught up with du Welz to talk about the challenges of bringing a true story to the screen and his hopes of opening up a debate in his homeland.

An immense yet slinking police procedural that slips with disturbing ease into its audiences’ subconscious, Fabrice Du Welz’s Maldoror owes a debt to many contemporary serial killer creepers to come before it but comes together as a formidable, restrained, uniquely resonant work that finds the director at the height of his powers in telling a story at once hauntingly personal and broad in scope.

In early ‘90s Belgium, impulsive young police officer Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon) is preparing to marry his sweetheart, Gina (Alba Gaïa Bellugi) but is soon distracted when he’s tapped by his superior, Hinkel (Laurent Lucas) to participate in Maldoror – a secret operation to monitor a dangerous sex offender named Marcel Dedieu (Sergi López) and investigate the abduction of two pre-teen girls. But, as Chartier gets closer to uncovering the truth, he grows increasingly erratic and frustrated with the calcified bureaucracy of his department, jeopardizing...

A crime thriller shot through with a character study, Fabrice du Welz draws loosely on the true crime story of Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux for his latest outing. Du Welz comes at the story from the perspective of baby-faced but volatile cop Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon), who we understand isn’t scared to take the law into his own hands from the opening minutes.

The idea of ‘seeing red’ isn’t just an emotion but a visual motif employed by the director and his cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, from the crimson distortion of the credits to the flicker of red lights at a celebration and light saturation that gives the film the look of an old polaroid at one point.

Although this is set in the Nineties, the gritty feel makes it redolent of Seventies-set thrillers, a mood reinforced by the way that du Welz embeds us in Paul’s life from the start.

A crime thriller shot through with a character study, Fabrice du Welz draws loosely on the true crime story of Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux for his latest outing. Du Welz comes at the story from the perspective of baby-faced but volatile cop Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon), who we understand isn’t scared to take the law into his own hands from the opening minutes.

The idea of ‘seeing red’ isn’t just an emotion but a visual motif employed by the director and his cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, from the crimson distortion of the credits to the flicker of red lights at a celebration and light saturation that gives the film the look of an old polaroid at one point.

Although this is set in the Nineties, the gritty feel makes it redolent of Seventies-set thrillers, a mood reinforced by the way that du Welz embeds us in Paul’s life from the start.

Inspired by a notorious real-life case, Fabrice Du Welz’s film starts strong but gets lost in the murky waters of conspiracy

Fabrice Du Welz began the century as a master of Belgian gothic, riding the wave of Euro-extreme cinema. Calvaire, or The Ordeal, from 2005, was a gruesome gripper. Since then, in a chequered career, he has more or less maintained his stride, and now he comes to Venice as director and co-writer of an initially promising true-crime horror procedural. It is loosely inspired by the serial killer and child rapist Marc Dutroux, whose case enraged the Belgian public when it became clear the country’s various quarrelling law-enforcement authorities, hampered by bureaucracy, incompetence and turf-war disputes, had in effect allowed Dutroux to go free for years.

It’s an intriguing premise and this baggy, free-ranging movie presents a tonal range of sour acrimony, anxiety and occasional flourishes of nauseous black comedy.

Belgian director Joachim Lafosse is done being silent.

Just like the family in his latest film “A Silence,” inspired by the real-life case of Victor Hissel: a former lawyer for two victims of killer Marc Dutroux, ultimately charged with possession of child pornography.

“To me, it’s not a dark story, because they do start to talk,” he says about the characters played by Emmanuelle Devos and newcomer Matthieu Galoux, slowly digging up the long-buried sins of their husband and father (Daniel Auteuil).

“Astrid and her children decide to step out of that criminal environment. With this film, I want to show how people can be violated by something like that, how difficult it is to shake off that shame and guilt. It’s difficult, but I think it’s possible.”

He also had to learn how to speak up, he says.

“In 2008, I made ‘Private Lessons.’ I didn’t say that at the time,...

In his staggering 2012 film “Our Children,” Belgian writer-director Joachim Lafosse turned an unthinkable true-life tragedy — the story of a mentally ailing mother who, one hitherto ordinary afternoon, single-handedly murdered all five of her children — into deeply compassionate drama, focusing not on the lurid whats of the event, but its more intimate, less discussed whys. That approach again serves Lafosse well in “A Silence,” another solemn, upsetting domestic chamber piece that lightly fictionalizes and foregrounds the hidden, knotty familial tensions behind a headline-making scandal. In this instance, it’s one disturbing, high-profile court case that begets another, both connected by differing forms of patriarchal abuse — but Lafosse’s interests lie, as ever, less in procedural formalities than in unruly household turmoil.

Outside Belgium, audiences are less likely to be familiar with the case of serial killer Marc Dutroux, convicted in 2004 of the kidnapping, rape and murder of multiple girls — or that of Victor Hissel,...

Fabrice du Welz, whose latest film “Inexorable” (pictured) played at Toronto, is reteaming with his Belgian producer Jean-Yves Roubin at Frakas Production on his next project, “Maldoror.”

Inspired by a true story, “Maldoror” follows Paul Chartier, a young policeman who became obsessed with a case involving a notorious child abuser after coming close to catching him. Popular Belgian actor Benoit Poelvoorde, the star of “Inexorable,” is part of the cast of “Maldoror.”

Roubin, who is attending San Sebastian with Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s “Earwig,” as well as “Titane” (which he co-produced), described “Maldoror” as a mix of thriller and film noir in a similar vein to David Fincher’s “Zodiac.” He said the film, now in development, was inspired by a notorious crime case that shook Belgium in the 1990s, known as the Affaire Dutroux.

Marc Dutroux was a convicted Belgian serial killer, rapist, and child molester who was sentenced to...