Black Sunday Confessions – Tom Van Avermaet, writer-director of ‘Hearts of Stone’

Our Five Black Sunday Confessions series continues with Hearts of Stone, a hauntingly beautiful short fantasy that screened earlier today at the Black Sunday Film Festival.

Directed and co-written by Belgian filmmaker Tom Van Avermaet, Hearts of Stone is a modern fable about loneliness, longing, and impossible love. Starring Noomi Rapace and Jessica Barden, the film follows Paula, a solitary street artist who performs as a living statue and has fallen in love with Agatha, a real stone sculpture beside which she performs each day in a sculpture park in Antwerp. When a living statue festival arrives and Agatha is suddenly replaced by a sleek modern work, Paula embarks on a desperate search that leads her to a forgotten corner of the park, where discarded statues await removal.

Blending surrealism, melancholia and quiet emotional power, Hearts of Stone explores modern isolation through a magical realist lens, using meticulous production design, painterly imagery and deeply felt performances to create a fragile, dreamlike world. Having screened at almost 100 festivals worldwide and earned multiple major awards, the film’s Black Sunday screening offered UK audiences the chance to discover a work that places genre storytelling firmly in the realm of modern myth.

Ahead of the screening, Tom Van Avermaet took part in Five Black Sunday Confessions, reflecting on formative cinematic experiences, the strange power of unsettling films, and why loneliness might be the most frightening subject of all.

Tom Van Avermaet, writer-director

1. Tell us about your film and what brings it to the Black Sunday Film Festival.

My film is a short poetic fantasy titled Hearts of Stone. It stars Noomi Rapace (Alien: Prometheus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lamb) and Jessica Barden (The End of the F**ing World*, The Lobster, Dune: Prophecy) in the lead roles.

The film tells the story of a lonely street artist who performs as a living statue and has fallen in love with an actual statue. Every day she performs beside it in a statue park in Antwerp, Belgium. One day, however, a living statue festival arrives in the park, and she discovers that her beloved sculpture has been replaced by a more modern piece.

Panicked, she scours the park searching for the statue, eventually discovering it among a collection of discarded sculptures. She learns that they are all scheduled to be removed the following day. At the end of the festival, she returns to the statue one last time and kisses it, waiting to see what will happen. The rest of the story audiences will have to discover in the theatre at Black Sunday.

Regarding the festival, I had heard wonderful things about both its programming and its atmosphere. As someone who loves festivals that put genre cinema at the forefront, I was truly honoured that our film was selected. Hearts of Stone has been fortunate to enjoy a successful festival run with many selections and awards, but it’s always a pleasure and a privilege to screen at a new festival and have a new UK audience discover our work.

2. What moment made you realise you wanted to create films, not just watch them?

I’ve always been drawn to storytelling in one form or another. Funnily enough, as a young child in the era of VCRs, our machine suddenly stopped working. When my parents took it to the repair shop, they discovered several LEGO figurines stuck inside the mechanism; so even back then, I was apparently trying to get my imagination onto the screen.

The moment that truly solidified my desire to become a director, however, was seeing Requiem for a Dream in the cinema for the first time. The way Darren Aronofsky wove together music, editing, performances, cinematography, and story into such an immaculate tapestry completely blew me away. What struck me most was how profoundly his voice came through in every element of the film. I had always dreamed of telling stories and was obsessed with audiovisual narrative, but that experience was a real turning point; it made me aspire, in my own small way, to do something similar with my own ideas.

3. What was the first film that truly unsettled you?

As a kid, I religiously watched and rewatched, the Jan Svankmajer version of Alice in Wonderland over and over, which I feel a lot of people definitely would find unsettling with macabre stop motion (but which I loved, so maybe I’m just hard to unsettle). There are two films I’ve been trying to rediscover later in life that might fit the bill, but have never managed to refind. They’ve stayed with me for years, though I believe they were made-for-television films and may now be lost, their titles have always eluded me, even in our age of information. To be fair, time may also have distorted my memory of them somewhat.

One was a strange Dutch film from the 1980s about a poltergeist, or at least an entity that communicated through knocking sounds. The other was also, I believe, a television film in which the spirit of a dead killer takes over the body of a father, which changes his personality gradually.

As an adolescent I watched a great deal of horror, but films that genuinely unsettled me, I found quite rare. I loved the original Candyman, for example, though I’m not sure it truly unsettled me. That feeling perhaps came later, with films like the original Dutch The Vanishing (Spoorloos) or Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Funny Games,  films that quietly creep in and burrow under your skin.

4. Who would be your dream collaborator, living or dead?

Among living artists, I would absolutely love to work with Mark Rylance, a true British treasure whom I feel would fit perfectly within my cinematic universe. For similar reasons, Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman, and Sophia Lillis (an emerging talent) are also very high on my list. There are many people I dream of collaborating with, so it’s difficult to limit the list.

Among those no longer with us, I would say cinematographers Conrad Hall and Gordon Willis, and costume designer Eiko Ishioka. In terms of actors: George C. Scott, Gene Hackman, Rutger Hauer, Bruno Ganz, and Audrey Hepburn, who was actually born in my native Belgium. Again, it’s hard to limit.

5. If your worst fear became a film, what would it look like?

Arachnophobia would definitely be high on the list, but if I were to make my own horror film, it would probably revolve around loneliness as the true killer, explored through a more magical realist lens. I think what makes horror so special is that it allows filmmakers to confront their own fears in a profound way, so perhaps one day I’ll finally be able to face one of mine behind the camera.

Hearts of Stone screened earlier today at the Black Sunday Film Festival. Keep checking back with Love Horror for more interviews, filmmaker insights and festival coverage as our Five Black Sunday Confessions series continues throughout the weekend.