The Broken Circle Breakdown

Felix van Groeningen's The Broken Circle Breakdown earned a 2014 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film (Belgium's first nomination since the Dardenne brothers' run of work) and won the European Film Award for Best Film at the 2013 ceremony, beating Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty in the same year (Sorrentino's film would go on to win the subsequent Oscar). The film also won six Magritte Awards at the Belgian national ceremony.

The film is adapted from a 2010 stage play of the same name by Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, both of whom appear in the cast, Heldenbergh in the male lead, opposite Veerle Baetens, who won Best European Actress at the 2013 European Film Awards for the role. Cinematography is by Ruben Impens (later Raw, Titane, The Eight Mountains) and the soundtrack is built around real bluegrass and Americana songs performed live on screen; the soundtrack album was a commercial success in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Van Groeningen would follow the film with Belgica (2016), the English-language Beautiful Boy (2018) with Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet, and the Italian-language The Eight Mountains (2022), the latter co-directed with his partner Charlotte Vandermeersch and a Cannes Jury Prize winner. The Broken Circle Breakdown remains the film that established his international career and the most decorated Belgian production of its decade after the Dardennes' major prize-winners.