Karim Akalay’s Belgian family comedy 6TM has won the New Visions Award for the most promising European project at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival. Still in development, the film follows three generations in a Brussels housing estate. Filming is planned for July 2027, with neighbourhood stories and non-professional actors shaping its approach.
Karim Akalay’s 6TM, a Belgian family comedy still in development, has won the New Visions Award for the most promising European project at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival.[1], [2]
Filming is planned for July 2027. 6TM is set during a scorching summer in Cité Modèle, a large housing estate in Brussels where Akalay was born. Three generations of one family provide its connected stories.[1]
Children search for a magic key to stop a friend who uses a wheelchair from having to leave because the lifts are broken. A teenage girl assembles a team of misfits for a football tournament, while a mother gathers neighbours to find out who has stolen the rain. Akalay describes heat, displacement and failing infrastructure as real problems met through joyful invention. His approach brings magic realism together with influences from manga.[1]
Producers Walid Bekhti and Hanoulia Salamé point to location filming, non-professional actors and neighbourhood stories as foundations for making the fantasy credible. Belgium’s Centre Vidéo de Bruxelles is producing the project with support from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Groupe Ouest and New Dawn Fund. The title plays on French sounds: 6T resembles cité and M refers to Modèle. Akalay places collective action ahead of an individual hero.[1]
