As
a (very) young man Michael R. Roskam was passionate about grafic novels,
comic-strips and cinema. Inspired by the great Belgian tradition of comic-strip
artists like Hergé, he decided to become a comic-strip artist himself and went
to St-Lucas Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. There he discovered painting and
contemporary art. He graduated but also got involved into writing fiction -
meanwhile keeping his passion for the image alive by drawing and experimenting
with video. After several jobs as a journalist (@ De Morgen, newspaper) and a
copywriter (@ Saatchi&Saatchi, advertising), he wrote a script for a short
film. By directing this himself he returned to the roots of his creative urge:
cinema. The result was his first short movie: "HAUN". He finally found out what
he'd always been looking for: movement. Since then he worked as a moviemaker.
"CARLO" (prod. CCCP), his second short, won several prizes at national and
international festivals and was shown on different tv-channels and movie
theatres in Europe. His third short "THE ONE THING TO DO" (prod. CCCP)
premiered in December 2005 at the Leuven International Shortfilm Festival were
the film won the Audience Award. In November 2007 he went to L.A. to shoot TODAY IS FRIDAY (prod. SAVAGE FILM/M. ROSKAM), a short film based on an
Ernest Hemingway story.