Hearts of Stone

Director - Tom van Avermaet

Tom Van Avermaet (°22/07/1982) an award winning writer/director based in Belgium, past winner of the European Film Award and nominated for the US Academy Awards.

Whilst enrolled in his last year of film school at the prestigious RITCS in Belgium, he completed his thesis film ‘DREAMTIME - Droomtijd’, with which he graduated with honours. The film went on to complete a successful national & international festival run with over 60 festival selections and numerous awards (among which a nomination for the Mélies D’or for best European fantastic Short Film). The film was also awarded a VAF Wild Card, the highest honour for a student film in Belgium.

Starring in his first professional short ‘DEATH OF A SHADOW’ are Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead, Rust & Bone, The Danish Girl, Far From The Maddening Crowd,...), Laura Verlinden (The Brand New Testament, Happy End), Peter Van Den Eede and Benjamin Ramon. The film was shown in over a hundred festivals worldwide, winning around 50 awards. Biggest honours were winning the European Academy Award (European Film Award) for best short film and a nomination for best live action short at the Academy Awards (Oscars).

Currently presenting his next short Hearts of Stone starring Noomi Rapace and Jessica Barden.

In the Belgian commercial world, Tom helmed amongst others two spots for electricity provider ‘Luminus’, one of which landed him the CFP award for Best New Film Talent.

Tom has also been active in the short film festival world as a jury member or head of jury, among which the academy qualifying Leeds International Film Festival and the Sundance TV Channel competition for new local talent in Belgium.

Besides that Tom has completed a first draft of a feature film called ‘The Art of Remembering’ with co-writer Andrew Eu,this with the help of a screenwriting grant from the Flemish Audio-visual Fund. He’s also in the early stages of development for an anthology show with the British writer Robert Shearman based on his short stories.
Tom is represented by Creative Artist Agency (CAA) and agent Jon Cassir and managed by Sentient (Christopher Tuffin and Renee Tab).

Besides film, Tom is also active on the social medium instagram as an online curator of surreal art. His popular page, http://www.instagram.com/tom_van_avermaet/ , is both a mood board of his future projects and a way to promote imaginative art and artists to an audience of all ages.

Director Statement

As a storyteller I’ve always been fascinated by that particular group of street artists that calls themselves 'living statues'. Standing stock still for what sometimes feels like hours at a time, dressed and made up to look like stone or bronze, the idea of someone wanting to do this intrigued me to no end. I started imagining what would drive a person to take up this calling, what their life would look like and what a society of these performers could be. ‘Hearts of Stone’ became the result of the exploration of the life of such a person, but I also saw it as opportunity to tell an impossible love story, perhaps one that would seem the most impossible of all, but also somehow perfectly fitting. For me it made perfect sense that a person that acted like a living statue would fall in love with a real statue.

‘Hearts of Stone’ thus in essence grew to become a modern fable, where I wanted to explore modern loneliness and the universal longing to be loved, a longing that even a statue could have. For when during the course of the story the statue called Agatha, the object of affection of Paula, the living statue, does come to life, I wanted to portray what the life of a real statue would be like and how they would look at the world around them. I tried to use all elements of cinematic storytelling, be it music, anamorphic cinematography, make-up, costume, production design and visual effects to create a fragile, dreamlike tale of longing and brokenness, of two beings lost in their own way that somehow find each other. Me and my team tried to take special care to make every detail matter and make the shots feel rich and painterly, matching the performances by a cast I’m very proud to have been able to work with. I hope we succeeded in our mission to transport the viewer into world where the fantastical can feel real, be it even for a short while.