Felix van Groeningen

Felix van Groeningen born 1 November 1977 Ghent is a Belgian filmmaker He is known for The Broken Circle Breakdown 2012 and Belgica 2016 with the former being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards He made his Englishlanguage debut with the biographical drama Beautiful Boy 2018 Van Groeningen was born in Ghent His parents were hippies who led a very liberal lifestyle He has an older brother Seppe After his parents divorce they lived in the same house but each with a new partner His father started a live music club The Charlatan when he was twelveyearsold which became the inspiration for his film Belgica He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts KASK and graduated in 2000 with a Masters of Audiovisual Arts his masters thesis was the short film 50CC After graduating from college van Groeningen directed several short films and written and directed several stage plays He embarked on a longterm collaboration with Dirk Impens originally his professor at KASK who produced all five of Van Groeningens feature films from 2004 to 2016 under his production company Menuet Impens announced he was closing down Menuet in July 2017 He and Belgian actress Charlotte Vandermeersch have a son Rufus who was born in 2018 He is fluent in several languages including Flemish Dutch French and English