“Dust”, interview with actors Arieh Worthalter and Jan Hammenecker

In “Dust”, directed by Anke Blondé and written by Angelo Tijssens, the fall happens before the film even begins. Set over the course of one suspended, storm-soaked day in 1999, the story follows two Belgian entrepreneurs as they learn that their fraudulent empire is about to be exposed. The police will arrive by morning. There is no escape plan that can truly work.

In Competition at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, the film resists the mechanics of a thriller. Instead of asking what will happen, it asks how it feels when everything you have built financially, socially, and psychologically disintegrates.

For the two men at its centre, Luc and Geert, that disintegration is embodied by Arieh Worthalter and Jan Hammenecker, whose performances hinge less on action than on internal fracture.

Playing the Fall in Slow Motion

Because the outcome is known from the start, the actors approached their roles not through suspense but through sensation.

Hammenecker, who plays Luc, describes his character’s emotional state through a physical metaphor: falling off a bicycle. “When you fall, it feels as if time slows down,” he explains. “You think you can control it, but you can’t.” In that suspended instant, perception intensifies. Details become sharper. Awareness expands.

Luc experiences his collapse in a similar, slow-motion way. He becomes acutely conscious of how others see him, of friendships that may have been illusions, of the fragility of his constructed identity. Yet awareness does not equal acceptance. “It’s denial,” Hammenecker notes. “The outcome is not accepted.”

Worthalter sees Geert caught in the same liminal state. Even as the scandal becomes inevitable, he continues to hide money, manoeuvre, and negotiate internally. Jail remains abstract; the system still feels negotiable. “They don’t accept it,” he says simply.

Status, Shame and the Fear of Exposure

What frightens these men more: prison or public exposure?

“The real punishment,” Hammenecker reflects of Luc, “is that people will see you as human and not as special as they thought.” For individuals who have internalised an image of near-divine control, the loss of status is existential. Prison may confine the body; shame dismantles identity.

Worthalter emphasises that Geert initially frames the scandal as a failure rather than wrongdoing. He deflects responsibility, diluting guilt into collective language. The deeper moral dimension, the harm done to others, remains emotionally inaccessible.

Only when confronted with the inevitability of consequences does something begin to shift. Shame, Worthalter suggests, may become the first step toward reconnecting with empathy. But in “Dust”, that process is only just beginning.

Silence as a Strategy

Silence dominates the film as much as dialogue. Hammenecker notes that part of that restraint reflects a regional culture in Flanders, where speaking is often measured, even avoided. “Is it really worth it to speak?” he asks, describing a reflex to remain quiet rather than risk disruption.

Worthalter draws a distinction between silence and muteness. For Geert, silence is internal first: emotions surface but are immediately suppressed. To preserve the image of strength, the inner voice must be silenced. If asked directly about pain, he suggests, these men would freeze. They lack the vocabulary for vulnerability.

Silence becomes armour, a way to protect the façade of control. But it also traps them, isolating them from genuine connection.

A Complicated Bond

The dynamic between Luc and Geert carries the intimacy and dependency of a long-standing partnership, almost marital in its intensity. Before shooting, the actors rehearsed and built trust, allowing a natural rhythm to develop.

On screen, their relationship often unfolds through glances rather than words. In a film where speech is dangerous, looks carry accusation, loyalty, and resignation.

In “Dust”, the spectacle of corporate scandal remains largely off-screen. What lingers instead is the interior echo of collapse, the moment when power evaporates, and what remains is a man confronted with himself.

Plot