Their prize-winning film saved Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen’s relationship: “And an army of therapists” | showbiz

“We had lost the balance in that eternal field of tension between personal development and a joint project, between engagement within a relationship and individual freedom,” Vandermeersch told the Mediahuis newspapers. “Our relationship has been hanging by a thread. We have had to carefully look for the threads that could reconnect us as the grown humans we have become. With the help of an army of therapists, we painstakingly put everything back together. And that process continues, much more consciously than before.”

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So it came back fine. Thanks to their son Rufus, they tell. Physical attraction too, love, security. “But the film has also brought us together again,” says Charlotte. And Van Groeningen agrees, they have been together for about fifteen years now. “Charlotte and I had worked separately for many years,” he says. “Our lives were no longer in sync. When the pandemic and at the same time the film project started, we went through a difficult moment. Making the film together was good for us. Had I done it alone, it would have been very difficult for our relationship as well as for the film. We’ve made chunks and time will glue them all together. It has cost us many conversations. Still. But we know one thing very clearly: we want to move forward together.”

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Charlotte feels the same way. “Now we’ll see where we end up,” she says. “I have a feeling that we will stay together. It’s not necessary, I don’t see staying together as an end in itself. But it feels that way. I’m aiming for another fifteen years to start.”

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