Embrace on
the Egg Market

On the morning of the trial, Noor tells her grandpa that she forgives him. Shocked, he gets up and leaves. He had been a real estate tycoon, and one of his renovations went fatally wrong: the Palace of Justice collapsed. At the highly anticipated court session, the judge unexpectedly stands up, resigns and walks out. But Noor follows him, she wants a verdict. The judge, however, is equally resolute: he will never cast a judgement on anyone again…

Embrace on the Egg Market (Dutch: Omhelzing op de Eiermarkt) is a feature film written and directed by Pieter Solta, shot in Antwerp. A fictional story about a real estate scandal, a fictional mayor of Antwerp, a Palace of Justice that collapses, and a judge who will no longer judge: a tragicomedy about justice, the courts and forgiveness, with Jan Decleir, Jan Bijvoet, Wouter Hendrickx, Veroline Vanderbeek and Marjan Deschutter. All characters and events are fictional.

Triggerhappy and Cowie the Coward walk into a bar. Triggerhappy stands up, speaks out for justice and starts shooting judgments. Cowie the Coward lazily leaks pointless onto the bar seat, understands, and shares wise words of love.

No one wants to be caught in a joke like this. Yet we all are. The conflict between the need for justice and the need for understanding has been stabbing into the skin of our necks ever since humans started walking on two legs. In a society increasingly polarized to the extremes, this conflict strikes in the heart of our time.

I try to make a wise, funny, profound and innovative film that is in content and form an ode to the grace of cinema.

I want a cinema of multiple realism. I want to show the reality verifiable to the naked eye: characters crossing paths during twenty-four crucial hours, but also the cinematic reality—characters forced to dance on a street that cracks all the way into their bodies. This is the grace of cinema: the reality of the audiovisual dogma of representation, and that of the subconscious, visionary experience. I think of the painter Borremans: simple, emblematic figures, classical and multiple in their realism. The gaping mouth of the old entrepreneur, who wonders what he is forgiven for. I wanted a filmic choreography of acrobats wounded by good and evil, in a city that cracks open. The sinking of the ground is not a metaphor: it is real, pictorially multiple. Multiple realism is not a style but a necessity. There exists a forgiveness that redeems, and there exists a forgiveness that kills, simultaneously.

We’re polarizing ourselves to pieces. And yet that is somehow a good thing—we need to take a stance. Not doing so is choosing the side of the aggressor. The orgy of tolerance is over.

pieter@seewald-films.be · Seewald Films, Brussels