Lut Vandekeybus

Lut Vandekeybus is a director, camera operator and film producer, equally at ease telling stories from life, reporting current affairs and documenting dance and theatre.

After university studies in Belgium, she travelled and worked in the USA, Europe and Latin America, training along the way in photography, scriptwriting and filmmaking. In 1995 she established the production house Khadouj Films in Brussels. She made her debut with the short experimental documentary L’Rgorba, then shot In Apnee, an account of the Ultima Vez production Bereft of a Blissful Union.

In the years that followed she made observational documentaries, penetrating the closed world of a Moroccan family for Bletzi Bletzi and exploring life in Mexico's strict Mennonite community for Not All That ‘The World’ Does, Is Good for a Mennonite. In both cases, personal stories open up to explore wider issues about society and intercultural relationships.

She continued this theme with Linda & Ali, Two Worlds within Four Walls, a film about the cross-cultural marriage of American-born Linda and her Qatari husband Ali Al Saigel. Gaining unprecedented access to the insular world of Qatari society, Vandekeybus followed the couple and their seven children over three years. The film was developed through the prestigious EAVE workshop programme, going on to screen at 35 film festivals worldwide, winning several awards.

Between 2006 and 2010 Vandekeybus produced and directed short documentaries on social and current affairs in the Middle East, for Al Jazeera English Channel in Qatar. Since 2011 she has worked on Wim, while continuing a long-term project examining the evolution of Qatari society over more than a decade.

Selected filmography
QATAR , GAP IN TIME (working title, in production) feature documentary
WIM (2016) feature documentary
LINDA & ALI, TWO WORLDS WITHIN FOUR WALLS (2005) feature documentary
LA TERRE OFFERTE AUX HOMMES (2002) short documentary
THE CHINESE DOG (2001) short fiction
NOT ALL THAT ‘THE WORLD’ DOES, IS GOOD FOR A MENNONITE (1998) feature documentary
BLETZI, BLETZI... (1997) medium-length documentary
IN APNEE (1996) medium-length documentary
L’RGORBA (1995) short experimental documentary