Belgium's Coward Heads to TIFF as Oscar Entry
Belgium's Oscar race runs through Toronto this year.
Lukas Dhont's Coward has been selected as Belgium's entry for the Oscars and will screen in the Special Presentations programme at the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs 10-20 September 2026, according to Variety. It is the third Dhont film in a row to get the nod, after Girl and Close.
The selection follows a strong launch at Cannes. Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, the film's two leads, shared the best actor prize for Coward, presented by Geena Davis, the Festival de Cannes records show. The festival listed the film In Competition as a feature in 2026.
Coward is Dhont's third feature film. The 2026 production from Belgium, France and the Netherlands tells a love story set amid the hardships of the First World War, as listed by TIFF. Toronto has placed it in Special Presentations, its section for high-profile premieres and festival favourites from elsewhere.
It is not travelling alone. Michaël R. Roskam's Le Faux Soir will have its world premiere in the same Toronto programme, Variety reported. The film is set in 1943 and centres on Resistance fighters who print a false edition of Belgium's Le Soir newspaper during the Nazi occupation.
Roskam is best known internationally for Bullhead, which earned an Oscar nomination. He has not made a feature in Belgium since 2017's Race and the Jailbird.
Behind both titles is a cross-community funding structure. Coward is a majority Flemish production and Le Faux Soir is a majority Walloon project, yet both were backed by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) and the Screen Flanders Economic Fund, with support from both the VAF and the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. The VAF is the public body that finances film, television and games work in Flanders and co-productions with the region.
The Toronto double follows another marker for Flemish cinema. Flanders returned to the Berlinale competition after a 45-year absence with Anke Blondé's Dust.
For audiences in Toronto, this means two very different histories on offer. One looks to the trenches of 1914-1918. The other turns to an act of print defiance in the Second World War.
