At the 2025 Gijon International Film Festival, FICX, the FIPRESCI jury celebrated Cecilia Verheyden’s beautiful film Skiff.
Skiff is the story of Malou, a young girl who practices rowing, specifically the discipline of the skiff. She is alone in this small, narrow boat, rowing to “get everything out of her system,” as she says. Malou is a teenager, questioning her gender and sexual orientation. She doesn’t share the shower with her clubmates, dresses in her two brothers’ clothes, and hides behind an introverted personality. Yet Malou is radiant, her big blue eyes and blonde curls lighting up the screen. Femke Vanhove, who plays her, is certainly a future great actress.
The turning point comes when she meets her brother’s girlfriend, for whom she develops new feelings of love. Little by little, the two girls get closer. For Malou, it is a discovery of her sexuality, but also a major questioning of her gender and identity.
Belgian director Cécilia Verheyden chooses to treat this subject in a different tone from other films that deal with these issues, without falling into melodrama or miserabilism. She puts love at the center of the relationship, and the beauty of feelings: “The world is so dark outside that I don’t want that people come out the film with an even darker mood,” explained the director during the Festival. “So even though Malou has difficulties, we see hope in the relationship with her brother, with her mother, with her having this first step into knowing who she is and finding her true self. So for me, that was really important to not make a sad queer story.” Verheyden was there with her actress to meet the audience, something that confirms the importance of film festivals, the possibility to meet the artist.
“I didn’t already realize at that age that I was gay or queer. So I was just fascinated by my brothers—I’ve got three, and when they came home with their girlfriends, I always felt something when I opened the door. And so when I was thinking of writing my own feature film, that question popped in my mind. That’s actually how it all started,” Verheyden continued. The relationship between Malou and her brothers is explored deeply, something we don’t frequently see in cinema. We feel something true, directly inspired by personal experience. Even though there is tension at times, and drama is never far away, the film maintains a benevolent crest, wanting to believe a better future is possible. Despite the difficult paths we take, brotherhood and sisterhood will be there for support.
Actress Femke Vanhove stood out to Cecilia as soon as she saw her. She was looking for a young actress who was somewhat androgynous and athletic, as she needed to be credible as a rowing champion. Vanhove trained for six months, starting in the middle of winter! This determination is evident. She plays her character with the same intensity she puts into her rowing. “It was so hard. My hands were bleeding,” said Femke. Verheyden didn’t want to make a classical sports film: “The competition wasn’t important to me.” The skiff is a metaphor for what Malou is going through: She has to find her balance in this boat, just as she has to find “the balance in her life, between the boyish and girlish part of her body.” Besides, rowing is so cinematic. “When I went to watch some rowing sessions in Ghent, I was fascinated by the beauty of this sport. This is so visual, this movement on the water, and the skiff is long like a cinema screen.”
Skiff offers beautiful cinema with some wonderful staging ideas, such as the superb shot of the brothers and sister spinning together in the whirlpool of the swimming pool, or the use of depth of field to symbolize Malou’s hesitations.
This subtle and relevant work, on a subject that is always delicate to address, won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Retueyos section of the FICX, symbolizing “new branches” in Asturian, revealing two artists, actress Femke Vanhove and director Cécilia Verheyden. Two talents to follow.
Julien Camy
Edited by Robert Horton
© FIPRESCI 2025