About
Artist statement
There is a reason I was born at home without a doctor, between my mother’s defiance and my father’s terror. Perhaps that first moment - chaotic, raw, utterly cinematic - was an early lesson: to surrender to life and to allow the story to unfold in its own rhythm.
It was a visceral initiation into life, so for me, stories live in the body. They echo like muscle memory. I feel them in unguarded moments, surfacing before the mind can intervene. As a film director I seek to recreate these moments in a tactile cinema, where the image presses into the flesh of the viewer and sound lingers on the tongue like salt. What I pursue is a sensory world, an attempt to translate the unspeakable.
Whether through documentary or fiction, dance film or music video, I explore how rhythm, light, and stillness turn into experience. Again and again I am looking for the thin membrane between self and other, where vulnerability becomes a language of connection.
Achievements
Narrative cinema
With my short documentary BGIRL BADLI I have traveled to different film festivals including Dok Leipzig, Krakow, FIPADOC, FIFA Montreal, IDFA School Programme and Cactus festival, where it won the prize for best short. My second short documentary CORAL CITY (co-directed with Camille Ghekiere) had its international premiere at Popoli festival and was selected and shown at Docville and Leuven Kortfilmfestival in Belgium. Currently, I am working on my fiction short COUP DE VENT and writing my feature film VITESSE.
Feature film ‘VITESSE’ (2025, Torino film lab, writing phase)
Fiction short ‘COUP DE VENT’ (2025, in progress)
Documentary ‘CORAL CITY’ (2024, Docville, Kortfilmfestival Leuven, Popoli)
Documentary ‘BGIRL BADLI’ (2022, Brussels Short Film Festival, Docville, Dok Leipzig, IDFA School Program, etc)
Documentary ‘Dear Angels’ (2020, Kortfilmfestival Leuven, VRT)
VAF scenario-atelier ‘GRIP’ (2016, feature film)
Dance & music
In 2022 I created a musical short film LIQUID LOVE, in close collaboration with the Belgian band Intergalactic Lovers. One year later, my participative hip hop dance film UNGODLY was born with the support of De Singel Arts Center.
Short film ‘UNGODLY’ (2024, Filmfestival Oostende)
Musical short film ‘LIQUID LOVE’ (2022, for Intergalactic Lovers)
Writing
As a screenwriter, I have co-written the coming of age series SEASON OF SEX (VRT MAX). Last year I was asked to write a series of columns for the Brussels magazine BRUZZ, about my inspiring encounters and experiences in my beloved city.
Series ‘Season of Sex’ (2023, Olympia Allaert for VRT)
Columns BRUZZ (2024, BRUZZ)
Academic research
After getting my masters in Languages and Literature, Cultural Studies and the Audiovisual Arts, my brain finds further intellectual stimulation in my academic research process at RITCS Royal School Of Arts, where I dig deeper into my film practice by studying the female gaze in regards to the politics of the dancing body on screen. In my artistic research I am developing a tactile visual language of subjectivity through theory and practice.
Teaching
At RITCS Royal School Of Arts I teach several ateliers for students in collaboration with activistic artists, dancers and musicians. Furthermore, I also read theoretical texts with the students and assist them in their final works.
Interviews
Other voices
About Charlotte:
“I have come to know Charlotte as an enthusiast with a rare combination of scenario know-how, organizational talent and commitment… whom I would very much like to recommend.” — Frank Van Passel (director)
“A born storyteller, Charlotte quickly caught the microbe of directing. She has a sixth sense for detecting good stories and, with her engaging and respectful personality, can make her characters actually tell their story in front of the lens in a particularly natural way. Which produces visual magic every time.” — Tinka Claeys (VRT Cultuur)
About short film ‘Coral City’ (2024):
“We were struck by your eye for beauty that sees the scapes above & below the ocean in an equally wondrous manner. It is admirable that you can extract the essence of any empathetic person’s worldly concerns, in such a comfortably philosophical manner, from Kushlani. The film does an important job of finding universal emotions with nature, without making it all about either.” — True/False Film Fest
About short film ‘BGIRL BADLI’ (2022):
“Hip hop is the contemporary, current blues. Avant-garde and at the same time aimed at the masses. Furthermore, I believe that women are the most important people on earth. They are all of us mothers. BGIRL BADLI shows the primal power of the feminine and social life as abstract dance.” — Mauro Pawlowski (musician, Brussels Short Film Festival Award)
“The jury liked "Bgirl Badli" a lot especially because you accompanied Mali in a very respectful way and showed us her dilemma without exposing or judging her. You found the right tone for this short format both addressing younger people at eye level but also interesting for an older audience giving an inside view to the inner struggles of a teenager.” — DOK Leipzig
“We're so glad to have BGIRL BADLI in our selection. It's not that common to portray young people with such a supportive point of view.“ — Flying Film Festival
About short film ‘Dear Angels’ (2020):
“‘Dear Angels’ features only LGBTQIA+ people speaking (...) De Cort and Declercq's documentary highlights their "queer" being so appealing that the atmospheric 16mm aesthetic contrasts quite a bit with the rather somber anecdotes. Many of these, understandably of course, tare at what was (or is) difficult for anyone who deviates from the norm” — Niels Putman (kortfilm.be)