The Film Festival of Ghent contacted our director Lionel Goldstein to create a film to celebrate their 50 years anniversary. They wanted to reach a cinephile audience and to engage them to their festival, while simultaneously reaching a younger audience. The goal was to show that a film festival is not only happening in the now, but that it also has a history. The Belgian audience and people have a very absurd and surrealistic way of thinking and seeing things. So, the idea was making “fun in a sad way” of something as serious as Art House film festival or a movie made by Rainer Fassbinder. Lionel Goldstein did research and found out that the first screening on the Ghent Filmfestival 50 years ago was "Händler, der vier Jahreszeiten" by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. So they invented the story that our main actor makes a film about his birth 50 years ago during the festival.

Lionel Goldstein is the alias of Belgian directing duo Koen Mortier and Joe Vanhoutteghem, co-founders of CZAR Brussels.
In 2001, Koen and Joe decided to have Lionel follow a path that was different from the directing careers each of them had established individually. With the absurd, near documentary style they adopted, Lionel almost immediately won international prizes. In 2002 and 2003, Lionel won a Golden Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival for, respectively, the FRISK and XBOX campaigns for Wieden+Kennedy London and BBH London. In November 2003 Lionel was awarded the BTAA Best Director Award (British Television Advertising Awards), which is the highest achievement for a commercial director. In the same year he won Gold at Eurobest for his DE MORGEN film ‘Cocaine’. In 2005 he won gold at Cannes for his DEXIA ‘Braille’ film and in 2013 he won Bronze for his Canal Digital film ‘The Most Fertile Woman In The World’. His most recent film for Equal Pay Day ‘Eternal Pregnancy’ won Gold at Cannes in 2021 making it Lionel’s fourth Golden Lion. Lionel’s world is absurd, sad and funny but believable and extremely relevant at the same time. Based on the original concept, he usually rewrites the scripts. He adds aforementioned elements to emotional situations and characters, allowing the viewers to empathise with. Over the years Lionel’s reel has come to encompass a wide range of sharp and witty films that certainly bring some extra flavour to the international advertising landscape.