Bobbejaan

Benny Vandendriessche België 62 min.

Bobbejaan has created an impressive career composing songs, singing and acting. He even built the successful theme park Bobbejaanland. In his old age, however, he asks himself whether he always made the right choices. This intimate and emotional portrait was filmed by his son and shows Bobbejaan in the last stages of his life. What does it do to a human being when you, as he said himself, "have a lot of history, but little future"?

DOCVILLE 2016
Nationale selectie

Belgian entertainer and entrepreneur Bobbejaan Schoepen lives in a villa in the Kempen, where he can hear the people visiting his theme park screaming in the background. But he is old and sick, and slowly but surely the once active Bobbejaan is fading away. The documentary shows how his wife touchingly continues to care for him and his son who wants to capture it all on camera. The result is a documentary full of loving intimacy.

The alternation between the archival footage and his son’s amateur camera footage turns “Bobbejaan” into a moving portrait of a man full of entrepreneurial talent and creativity but also with a broken dream. His son Tom remains hopeful that his father will be rediscovered, both here and in the United States and with a documentary like this one, it could certainly happen.