The Film Festival of Ghent contacted our director Lionel Goldstein because they wanted a film to celebrate their 50 years anniversary.

They wanted to reach a cinephile audience and to engage them to their festival, but at the same time they wanted to touch a younger audience. And to show them that a film festival is not only happening in the now, but that it also has a history.

Initially there was no idea, just that they wanted a good commercial for their anniversary.

In the video, we open with Rainer in the dining room of an old house, celebrating his 50th birthday with a cake bearing a burning "50" candle. Silveer films as Rainer announces his plan to recreate the story of his birth. Rainer explains his plan to a room filled with actors and assigns the task of "ma" and "pa" to two of them. Rainer searches through clothing and gives "ma" a fake belly, and "pa" just thinks it's all a bit strange. In a cafe, "ma" and "pa" recount their past to Rainer, who insists they recreate the entire evening. The video culminates in an old cinema, where Rainer reveals he was born during a film festival screening, followed by the birth scene, all emotionally charged.

Youngsters and even young adults are often unable to cope with something older than 50 years. In this case, a film festival that is known internationally. It was important to show that a brand, like the film festival, is build up year by year and that this brand exists already a half century. The objective was to demonstrate that this build-up isn't just about picking up easy flicks, in fact. A film festival must carefully select its films, as evidenced by the selection of the first film they presented fifty years ago, which was a film by Rainer Fassbinder, who became an icon in European cinema and continues to be so even after his demise.