Inspired by co-director Sanne De Wilde’s personal experiences, this physical archive presents the “love files” that transnational couples have to make to try to prove their love to the state in order to secure a residence permit for one of them. But how do you prove your love? What counts as evidence? Can genuine love actually be captured in photographs, text messages, and letters? How intimate does the evidence need to be? Is love allowed to be hesitant, changeable, or contradictory? Or is there an ideal it is expected to conform to? The state provides no criteria.
The Love Files is part of Belgian visual artist De Wilde’s Trilogy of Togetherness, a project exploring the intersection of intimacy and institutional violence. Together with Dutch co-director Samir Veen of the theater company Ontroerend Goed, De Wilde places visitors not in the position of those being assessed, who often have to wait months or even years for a decision, but in that of the bureaucrat whose job it is to be suspicious. You are given access to a file, and you have to make a quick decision: are you convinced that this love is genuine or not? Why? What might make you change your mind?
Recipient of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant 2026
