Walter Claessens

Two troubled children fall in love and run away from Brussels to the Belgian coast, but find life on their own more difficult than expected.

1989. Hugo (Michael Pas) is in his first master's year economics. At the same time he is training for the 110 meter hurdles. And he has another sport: chasing girls. But when his latest catch (Antje De Boeck) suddenly disappears, he's obsessively starts looking for her. She seems to have ended up in an idyllic, utopian countryhouse.

A batch of bottles of gold liqueur (also known as Bruidstranen) containing the original drink mixed with clandestinely distilled, toxic methyl alcohol is put on the market. One bottle is purchased by a couple on their way to a wedding party. During the wedding, the television in the kitchen next to the reception hall is showing images of the port of Antwerp, where three sailors have died after drinking from a bottle of gold liqueur. The police launch a manhunt for the perpetrators and the remains of the batch.

The family patriarch Van Paemel is a farmer on baron de Wilde's estate. His mild-mannered son Désire is accidentally shot during a hunting party on the estate and remains an invalid. Eduard, the eldest son, is a member of the socialist workers' movement and involved in strike actions in the city. Against her father's wishes, his daughter Cordule starts an affair with the poacher Masco. His youngest daughter, Romanie, is forced to work as a domestic servant at the castle, where she is seduced by Maurice, the baron's son and heir, and becomes pregnant. When the youngest son Kamiel also has to leave the farm because he is drafted into the army, the lack of workers on Van Paemel's farm becomes critical. As a result, the family is evicted from their home because they cannot pay the rent. Three of the children emigrate to the USA, one becomes a nun and one dies, until only the farmer and his wife remain.

The film describes the first working day of a twelve-year-old girl, shortly after the turn of the century. After a miserable childhood in a proletarian family, where she was mother to five toddlers, the sensitive girl follows in the footsteps of her parents and seventeen-year-old sister and sets off for the brickworks. The girl bravely defends herself at work, enduring the boys' bullying without tears, but when the day comes to an end, the foreman tells her that she must go to Krevelt, the boss, to be registered.

An inspector of the Antwerp criminal investigation unit faces problems not only in his professional life, but also at home. When he is partnered with a young, over-confident colleague, he loses control over the case in hand.

A curator in a museum meets a woman he knows from a centuries old painting.