With four feature-length films to his credit, Flemish-Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos, 41, has carved out a niche for himself at international festivals and is beginning to make one for himself on French screens too. Here, the second of his films to reach us, tells the story of Stefan, a Romanian worker on vacation, and Shuxiu, a botanist specializing in the study of mosses, as they meet in a summery, slow-motion Brussels. Even through the video-conferencing screen, the youthful-looking filmmaker, with his cap screwed onto his skull, captivates us with the infinite gentleness we recognize in his films.

I was born in Flanders, in the north of Belgium, on the border with the Netherlands. I never quite knew what I wanted to do. When I was young, I was always drawing. I thought about doing comics for a while but I gave up because I didn't have the talent. In 2001, at the age of 18, I entered the Sint-Lukas film school in Brussels. I had no "legitimate" film culture and swore by Quentin Tarantino or Werner Herzog. It all clicked when I shot a short film with an open ending. It may not have been very good but it got me thinking about storytelling standards. Since then, I've always worked on the cusp between the narrative and the non-narrative.

I've lived in Brussels for 23 years now. It took me a long time to feel at home here, to belong to Brussels as much as Brussels belongs to me. The presence of the city in my films is linked to my way of working, which consists of filming only people, places or things that I like or know well. Everything starts with the location, which for me always contains the beginning of a story. For Here, for example, I spotted a small Chinese restaurant that doesn't look like much, but it's beautiful, and that's where I got the idea for Shuxiu's character. I don't drive so I only get around by public transport, bicycle or on foot. Pacing the city is a way of unearthing stories. I often take the subway with no destination in mind, just to people-watch. That's how Ghost Tropic came about: by observing passengers falling asleep on the subway.

That really is the city's identity. There's no longer a majority in Brussels. If you go back to 2010, there may still have been a good half of French-speaking families but now that's not the case at all. Every community in Brussels is a minority. As a Fleming, I've always felt that way, being in the minority. But now, the only rule is that everyone belongs to several small overlapping communities. One of the consequences, which really interested me in the film, is the question of languages. When people meet here, the first thing they have to do is find common ground, whether it's language or a dance of gestures! This corresponds to the nature of Brussels as well as to the background of the two friends, Stefan Gota and Liyo Gong, who play the main characters.

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