Flemish Heaven 2016

Monique Ingrid De Vos runs a brothel together with her daughter Sylvie Sara Vertongen and several other girls. Eline Esra Vandenbussche is Sylvie’s six-year-old daughter, and she is barred from the brothel, a forbidden area for her, but on her birthday she slips inside. There she encounters a travestite, heard by voice and glimpsed in fragments of clothing, who abducts Eline and sexually assaults her. Eline is later found by Dirk Wim Willaert, a bus driver who is the father of Eline, though that fact must stay hidden and he is presented as Eline’s uncle since her birth.

The police, led by the detective Mathias Sercu, begin an investigation, but every lead ends in a dead end. Both Sylvie and Dirk press on, trying to uncover the truth behind Eline’s ordeal. On December 5, Dirk and Eline cross paths with a drunk Sinterklaas; the man’s behavior toward children, and the way Eline reacts to him, sway Dirk toward the belief that this is not the right suspect. Eline then tells Dirk that the supposed wrongdoer is named Robert.

When Sinterklaas hints that his own name might be Robert, Dirk takes drastic action: he kills him, burns the man’s car, and buries the body under concrete on his farm. In the aftermath, the police close the case surrounding Eline’s disappearance. Around Christmas, a national television message mentions the disappeared man Philippe Leclerc Serge Larivière; Eline associates Philippe with Sinterklaas and feels relieved that he will not return. It is never revealed whether Philippe is indeed the pedophile. Dirk is filled with remorse and contemplates hanging himself just before the ending credits, but his ultimate fate remains unknown.