Oscar Special: Michael R. Roskan and Matthias Schoenaerts, Bullhead

A segment we have highlighted in recognition of the film's 2012 Academy Award nomination, originally aired as part of Schaefer's 61st Berlin Film Festival Special:

A fact-inspired Belgian thriller about farmers injecting cows with illegal hormones, writer director Michael R. Roskan's Bullhead wisely focuses on the people caught up in this illegal web. While an elaborate police surveillance operation is launched in response to a cop's murder, we focus particularly on one farmer, the strong, silent hulk of the title, a bull of a man named Jacky. As played by Matthias Schoenaerts in what should be a star making performance, he’s not so much frightening – at first anyway – as he is tortured and inarticulate. At the Berlin Film Festival's headquarters, the Palast, Roskan discusses how he took years writing his screenplay to emphasize entertainment over facts while Schoenaerts acknowledges that even though he took three years to gain 40 pounds no one believes he didn't do it simply by using steroids.

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