Julian (2025) by Cato Kusters

BE / NL | 2025 | 91 min | Social Drama / Romance

➡️ Where to Watch: FR 

Two women fall deeply in love and decide to marry in every country where their relationship can legally be recognized. What begins as an ambitious celebration of commitment becomes something far more fragile when their journey stops after only four marriages.

Based on Fleur Pierets’ book and real-life story, Cato Kusters’ feature debut turns an extraordinary public project into an intimate drama about falling in love, building a future and confronting how suddenly that future can disappear.

➡️ Movie Insight: Julian transforms a remarkable real-life project into a deeply personal love story. The repeated marriages give the romance a distinctive journey structure, carrying Fleur and Julian across countries while their commitment remains the emotional constant. When that journey is unexpectedly interrupted, the film turns its original celebration of a shared future into a powerful reflection on love, memory and the time two people are given together.

Julian arrives at a moment when romantic dramas are increasingly finding their emotional power in real experiences rather than conventional fictional love stories. Fleur and Julian’s plan is immediately cinematic: travel across the world, repeatedly marry and transform their relationship into a visible expression of what legal recognition means. Yet the movie’s real strength lies in how quickly that large idea becomes intensely personal.

That gives Julian two emotional dimensions at once. It can be watched simply as a romance about two people imagining a life together, while the circumstances surrounding that relationship quietly reveal how laws, borders and institutions shape private lives. The social issue never has to replace the love story because the love story itself makes the issue understandable.

➡️ Trend Insight: Contemporary social dramas are becoming most accessible when large political questions are experienced through relationships audiences can immediately understand.

Julian is worth watching if you are drawn to intimate romantic dramas based on extraordinary true stories. The film begins with an immediately distinctive idea—two people attempting to marry in every country where their relationship can legally be recognized—but its emotional power comes from gradually moving beyond that concept. The marriages create the journey; Fleur and Julian’s relationship gives it meaning.

It should particularly connect with viewers who appreciate restrained performances, real-life stories and dramas where happiness and loss exist very close together. Cato Kusters avoids turning the film into either a conventional romance or an issue-driven drama, allowing everyday intimacy, travel, commitment and the unexpected fragility of a shared future to carry the story.

➡️ Viewing Recommendation: Watch Julian for its unusual true-story premise, Nina Meurisse and Laurence Roothooft’s intimate performances and the emotional transformation of its central journey. It begins with the excitement of two people trying to celebrate their love around the world and gradually becomes something much more personal. Viewers looking for a tender, bittersweet and emotionally grounded romantic drama should find the strongest connection.

The film has an unusually strong premise for an intimate drama: two people attempting to marry in every country where they legally can. It is romantic, adventurous and provocative enough to be explained in a single sentence, giving Julian the kind of clear narrative hook that travels easily through festival conversation, reviews and social media. The fact that the story is rooted in Fleur Pierets’ real experience gives that hook additional emotional weight.

Its visibility has also grown through a substantial festival and awards journey. Julian premiered in TIFF’s Discovery programme, was nominated for its Discovery Award, and subsequently accumulated wins and nominations including recognition at the Magritte Awards and Film Festival Oostende. Laurence Roothooft won an Ensor for her leading performance, while the film also won Leiden’s First Feature Competition.

➡️ Viral Insight: Julian has a rare combination of an instantly understandable premise and an emotional development that changes how audiences interpret that premise. Its real-life foundation makes the story especially discussable because viewers can move naturally from talking about the romance to talking about marriage, equality, mortality and grief. Strong festival recognition gives those conversations another reason to spread beyond the film’s initial audience.

Romantic cinema has traditionally built its momentum around whether two people will find each other or remain together. Julian begins somewhere different. Fleur and Julian are already committed enough to imagine marrying repeatedly across the world, allowing the film to explore what happens after love has been declared rather than making romantic uncertainty its central engine.

The film also shows how contemporary romance can absorb biography, social drama and grief without losing its identity as a love story. Kusters is adapting Pierets’ 2019 book, but the cinematic appeal comes from turning that lived experience into something emotionally immediate. That combination places Julian within a broader movement toward romances where love becomes a way of exploring the world surrounding the couple.

➡️ Cinema Insight: Romance is increasingly functioning as more than escapism. Filmmakers can use the emotional accessibility of a relationship to explore rights, identity, illness, loss and memory without turning those subjects into detached issue dramas. Julian shows how the genre can remain intimate while carrying much larger ideas.

Julian belongs to a growing space between romance, biography and social drama. These films begin with recognizable human experiences — falling in love, making commitments, losing someone — and allow larger questions about society to emerge through those experiences.

That approach makes difficult subjects more accessible. Instead of beginning with institutions or political arguments, Julian begins with two people who want to spend their lives together. The audience understands the emotional stakes before it has to consider the wider implications.

➡️ Movie Trend Insight: True-life romantic dramas can turn social questions into emotionally immediate cinema because audiences experience the consequences through people and relationships first.

Julian is positioned for viewers who respond to intimate character dramas, true-story adaptations and romances where emotional consequences matter more than conventional plot mechanics. Its combination of love, travel, social purpose and loss broadens its appeal beyond audiences specifically seeking relationship stories.

➡️ Audience Insight: Julian is particularly suited to viewers who want romance to leave them with something larger to think about after the relationship story ends.

Julian demonstrates the commercial and creative value of finding a simple human story inside a much larger subject. Its premise can be communicated instantly, yet it opens onto multiple themes — love, marriage, borders, legal recognition, illness, grief and memory. That combination is valuable for independent cinema because a clear emotional hook can help a complex film travel across festivals and international markets.

Its production path reinforces that potential. The film brings together Belgian and Dutch production partners, international sales through The Match Factory and a festival launch through Toronto’s Discovery programme. It subsequently developed an awards profile across multiple European festivals and awards bodies.

➡️ Industry Insight: Independent films can address global questions without becoming broad issue movies when filmmakers find one emotionally powerful relationship capable of carrying those ideas.

Kusters approaches an inherently public story through intimacy. Instead of allowing the global marriage project to dominate the movie, Julian appears designed around gestures, memories and the emotional connection between its two central characters, keeping the human relationship at the centre of a story with much wider implications.

The marriage project gives the film an unusually clear narrative framework, but its interruption transforms the story. What initially appears to be a journey built around movement and possibility becomes a drama about time, memory and what remains when an imagined future can no longer continue as planned.

Nina Meurisse and Laurence Roothooft need to make the central relationship convincing before its larger meaning can work. Roothooft’s subsequent Ensor win for leading performance provides significant recognition for the acting at the centre of the film.

For her feature debut, Kusters keeps the emotional experience closer to the characters than to the political argument surrounding them. That restraint is important: the audience is invited to understand the significance of the couple’s project by caring about the people attempting it.

The intimate visual approach gives the relationship the quality of remembered experience rather than polished romantic spectacle. Physical closeness, everyday gestures and personal spaces can therefore carry as much meaning as the international scale suggested by the marriage project.

The film’s sound world supports its restrained approach, allowing emotional moments to accumulate rather than constantly signalling how audiences should react. The effect complements a movie whose strongest feelings emerge through observation and intimacy.

The initial idea naturally creates forward movement: another country, another marriage, another step in the couple’s shared project. When that momentum is interrupted, the structural change becomes emotionally meaningful because the audience experiences the disappearance of the future the characters had been building.

These recent movies connect with Julian through relationships shaped by the world surrounding them. Love remains at the centre, but marriage, family expectations, identity, social acceptance and the freedom to build a life together give each romance consequences extending far beyond the couple.

Fatima leaves her close-knit family in the Paris suburbs to study in the city, where new relationships and experiences begin changing how she understands herself. The romance develops inside a larger coming-of-age story about independence, family expectations and deciding how much of yourself you are prepared to reveal.

➡️ Why It Connects: Like Julian, The Little Sister makes intimate relationships inseparable from the social environment surrounding them. Both films understand that love can become the moment when private identity, family expectations and personal freedom suddenly collide.

➡️ Where to Watch: AU · CA 

When Min’s boyfriend rejects his proposal, Min arranges a marriage of convenience with his friend Angela, exchanging the marriage for financial help with IVF. Their practical arrangement becomes much more complicated when family arrives expecting a traditional wedding, turning marriage into a collision between relationships, cultural expectations and competing ideas of family.

➡️ Why It Connects: Marriage is also much bigger than ceremony in Julian. Both films use the institution to ask who gets to define relationships and families, although The Wedding Banquet approaches those questions through romantic comedy while Julian moves toward intimate drama and grief.

➡️ Where to Watch: US 

In 1950s America, Muriel appears to be beginning a conventional married life with her husband Lee, while Lee’s brother Julius follows a very different path. Gambling, secrecy and unexpected relationships gradually expose desires that challenge the futures these characters were expected to accept.

➡️ Why It Connects: On Swift Horses and Julian both treat love as something capable of changing the direction of an entire life. Their romances become stories about freedom, social expectations and the gap between the life people are given and the life they discover they actually want.

➡️ Where to Watch: US 

➡️ If You Liked Insight: These films connect because romance becomes the beginning of a larger question: what kind of life are you allowed to build with the person you love? Marriage, family and social expectations turn private relationships into decisions about identity and freedom. Julian makes that idea especially powerful by transforming one couple’s extraordinary marriage project into a story about how love can confront both the rules of the world and the limits of time.

Julian begins with an idea that sounds almost designed for cinema: two people in love attempting to marry across the world. Kusters uses that extraordinary premise as an entrance into something quieter and more difficult, gradually shifting attention from the scale of the project to the emotional meaning of the relationship itself.

That makes the film particularly compelling for audiences drawn to intimate European drama and romances grounded in lived experience. Viewers expecting a conventional romantic journey may find its restraint challenging, but its combination of an unforgettable premise, emotional intimacy and real-world relevance gives it the potential to stay with audiences well beyond the ending.

➡️ Verdict: Julian turns an extraordinary real-life romantic project into an intimate story about love, time and the future two people believe they are going to share.

Julian reflects a broader development in contemporary romantic drama: the relationship itself no longer has to be the film’s only subject. Love can become the emotional route through which audiences encounter questions about society, mortality, belonging, memory and the future. The genre gains depth without losing the immediate human connection that makes romance universally understandable.

For filmmakers and producers, that creates considerable creative territory. True stories with clear emotional premises can move naturally between romance, biography and social drama while remaining accessible to international audiences. Julian suggests that some of the most resonant modern love stories may be those that show not only who people love, but what that love reveals about the world around them.

➡️ Final Insight: The next evolution of romantic drama is expanding the genre rather than abandoning it. Personal relationships can carry complex social themes while keeping emotion at the centre. Julian shows how one extraordinary love story can make much larger questions feel immediate and human.