De Engel van Doel | An Angel in Doel

Director: Tom Fassaert

Netherlands, Belgium 2011

Flemish

Forum

“I saw an angel when I was 16.”

De Engel van Doel is Tom Fassaert’s debut feature-length documentary. The film is immediately engaging – you don’t even know it is a documentary until the destruction of the first house.

A little village stands in the way of the expanding port of Antwerp. Only the oldest inhabitants, a widow, her friends and the village priest, remain, holding out tenaciously in the face of their shared fate.

Shot on 16mm over six years – sometimes only a minute a day. Following up on a small newspaper article, Fassaert met the priest and then Emilienne. He fell for her spontaneity and honesty immediately, as do we.

Read the Forum essay.