The best Jan Decleir’s history movies

Gerrit de Veer, a novice writer on a 16th-century Dutch merchant vessel, chronicles the daring mission to discover a trade route across the North Pole to Asia. But the heroic journey turns into tragedy when the ship gets stuck in the relentless, penetrating ice. The men are forced to spend the winter on the frozen, arctic wasteland of Nova Zembla, fighting polar bears, hunger and lethal temperatures. Their chances of making it until the following spring are virtually zero.

J.W. Katadreuffe is the son of Joba Katadreuffe and A.B. Drevenhaven. Though fully neglected by Joba, Dreverhaven ensures the succesfull career of his son. Mostly unseen, though he sues his son a few times. The son Katadreuffe succeeds, but at great costs.

In 1885, Africa is a succulent cake destined to be wildly divided and everyone wants a piece. A disturbed European king, a Pygmy working in a luxury hotel, a successful but lonely businessman, an enslaved porter, a young army deserter, a ghostly clarinetist. Some benefit from colonialism and greed. Others suffer racism and violence.

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

In one fell swoop, nine-year old David Van de Steen lost his mother, his father and his sister in an attack by the Brabant Killers in Aalst. His grandfather, Albert, has the well-nigh impossible task of giving David a new perspective on life, a future.

Cologne towards the end of the Second World War. The city is in ruins, everyone is afraid, many are dead. It is a time of great inhumanity. Cologne’s young Edelweiss Pirates refuse to submit to the pressure of the Nazi regime. They fight with the Hitler Youth and scrawl anti-war propaganda on walls. Karl is an Edelweiss Pirate; his younger brother, Peter, is in the Hitler Youth movement. The two young men have been alone ever since their mother’s death in a bombing raid; their father is serving at the front, and their older brother, Otto, has been killed in action. Otto’s financée, Cilly, is doing her best to survive the war with her children. Carl is trying to help her.

The family patriarch Van Paemel is a farmer on baron de Wilde's estate. His mild-mannered son Désire is accidentally shot during a hunting party on the estate and remains an invalid. Eduard, the eldest son, is a member of the socialist workers' movement and involved in strike actions in the city. Against her father's wishes, his daughter Cordule starts an affair with the poacher Masco. His youngest daughter, Romanie, is forced to work as a domestic servant at the castle, where she is seduced by Maurice, the baron's son and heir, and becomes pregnant. When the youngest son Kamiel also has to leave the farm because he is drafted into the army, the lack of workers on Van Paemel's farm becomes critical. As a result, the family is evicted from their home because they cannot pay the rent. Three of the children emigrate to the USA, one becomes a nun and one dies, until only the farmer and his wife remain.