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“La Civil”

With “La Civil,” the first feature from his new production company, Menuetto, headed for the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes, Belgian Flemish producer Everaert finds his many risks paying off. The film marks the fiction debut of Romanian-Belgian documentary maker Teodora Ana Mihai (“Waiting for August”) and follows a Mexican mother searching for her daughter kidnapped by members of a drug cartel.

Antwerp-based Everaert, who has a background in economics, finance and technology, moved into the film business as the CFO of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) in 2004. “I knew Teodora from my time at the VAF,” he says. “I was convinced of her talent and I knew that she was looking for a producer.” He jokes that VAF also served as his private film school through his close collaboration with then-CEO Pierre Drouot, producer of Jaco Van Dormael’s “Toto le Héros.”

In 2013, Everaert launched his career as general manager of the Flemish outfit Menuet. With the retirement of owner Dirk Impens, Everaert opted to launch his own company. He says, “It’s clear from the name that Menuetto wants to continue the legacy of Menuet: the same expertise, network and types of films.”

He is looking for author-driven projects with the potential to reach a broad audience and aims to do roughly one feature film and one long documentary per year, along with some smaller projects, minority productions and service production. Next up is the drama “The Eight Mountains” from Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, which just began shooting. For Everaert, the best part of producing is “helping a story come to life, working with an author who has something to tell and accompanying him/her in the complex process of telling it right.”

– Alissa Simon