Lukas Dhont directs young actors with patience and precision, catching the moment affection becomes something to hide. We admire his attention to faces and movement, but his scripts can be too calculated or too thin.
Fi1m perspective
In Close (2022), a girl at the school lunch table asks Léo and Rémi whether they are together, and Léo laughs. Dhont stays interested in what that laugh begins. Eden Dambrine, acting for the first time, makes the change in Léo readable on his face. We found his growing shame painful to watch, because the performance lets us see how quickly an easy friendship can become a source of embarrassment. This is Dhont at his most exact.
His debut, Girl (2018), established an interest in bodies and movement that continues through his work. Dhont followed it with Close and then Coward (2026), keeping Angelo Tijssens as co-writer across all three features. The settings change, but physical closeness remains central. He gives performers time to communicate through gesture rather than explanation. That helps the young actors in Close make the friendship credible before anyone starts questioning it.
Cinematographer Frank van den Eeden, another collaborator across the three features, gives this approach natural light and intimate framing. The flower fields in Close, where Léo and Rémi run together, are particularly well suited to Dhont's interest in movement. But the second half becomes too carefully arranged, and the film keeps prompting us to feel what the actors have already made clear. That is a substantial limitation in a film so good at noticing small changes in behaviour. His direction of Dambrine remains a stronger reason to watch than the way he develops the story.
In Coward, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne sustain a believable romance amid the Great War, while scenes of soldiers singing and dancing make room for pleasure without belittling the suffering. The care is evident, but Dhont and Tijssens give these men too little to do across two hours. Scattered storytelling and repetitive interludes keep interrupting a relationship that needs more substantial scenes. The performances make it worth considering, provided the subject already interests us. Start with Close, and be prepared to wish the second half trusted its actors as much as the first.
Biography
Lukas Dhont is a Belgian film director and screenwriter. He was born in Ghent on 11 June 1991.
His debut feature Girl (2018) premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Caméra d'Or and the Queer Palm. His second feature Close (2022), which he wrote with Angelo Tijssens, premiered in competition at Cannes and shared the Grand Prix. It was Belgium's entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Dhont was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in 2019.
