Domien Huyghe

Domien Huyghe (1988) is a Belgian film director and screenwriter. He is a Midpoint TV Launch & Torino Series and Filmlab alumni and received international recognition for his short film MAVERICK (2017). SEA SPARKLE is his debut feature film and was developed during the Cinekid Script & Director’s Lab and was selected for the Berlinale Co-production Market. He is developing his next feature film AMARI (Selected for the TorinoFilmLab Extended 2022) and a TV series SKATE OR HATE (Selected for the Torino SeriesLab 2021). Domien has been awarded several times as a director of remarkable music videos for bands such as BLaudzun, Antler King and Arches. His work often features themes such as coping with loss and reconnecting with family and he is always searching for innovative ways to bring such themes to a large audience.

“When I lost my father as a teenager, stories about loss helped me to name the unmentionable, to learn to understand the incomprehensible. Yet, I often felt unfulfilled, more so; I was sometimes angered by movies that were supposedly about a loss but then conveniently made a time jump of "six months after the events". Sometimes a deceased parent even reappeared! Other movies took the topic of grief seriously but were often so heavy that I thought I’d never be okay again. And some were almost parable-like with characters who are outsiders and out of touch with the world of a young viewer. SEA SPARKLE is my brave attempt to jump into that gap and create a story that takes the (young) viewer seriously, but at the same time draws them into a story full of magic, excitement, adventure, humor, and friendship. After all, just because you're grieving doesn't mean you can't have an adventure! Young people who experience something serious, such as loss, can often feel very lonely. No one understands that sometimes they have to flee into something magical, like a (sea) monster, to cope with life. With SEA SPARKLE, I want to show them that they are not alone, that it can happen to anyone. That's why the arena of the film is very recognizable, with skating, cool clothes, and music straight out of a 12-year-old's Spotify-list (Angèle). Through a quest of colorful characters in a unique setting, I hope to make a difficult topic accessible for conversation. I hope that those who leave the theater can have a talk about the loss of a loved one, about the fact that everyone grieves in their own way. I want to say that - no matter how dark life sometimes is - there will always be sea sparks.”