CISNEROS LIMA – Acclaimed Belgian filmmakers Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne will tell the story of an Islamist "fanatic" linked to jihadist attacks in their next film, the latter said on Wednesday in an interview.

The brothers’ new film, to be shot next year, comes after their native Belgium was rocked by the March 22 airport and subway bombings in Brussels, igniting national debate over home-grown Islamist extremism and how to counter it.

But Luc Dardenne said the new project originated long before that.

"We’ve been thinking about it for years," he said in Peru, where he was being honoured at the 20th edition of the Lima film festival.

"We’re going to deal with a fanatical character, a character related to Islamist terrorism," he said, declining to go into further detail.

The Dardenne brothers have twice won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival – in 1999 for Rosetta and in 2005 for The Child.

They are known for minimalist movies focused on characters at the margins of society.

Dardenne said both Belgium and neighbouring France, which has also been hit by a string of Islamist attacks, were now immersed in "an unusual, uncommon war".

"For the past 20 years in Belgium we’ve had schools where people study Arabic through the Koran, we have Salafist mosques," he said.

"They’re the ones that trained today’s youth, telling them, ’On one side you have us, the true Muslims. On the other side, the Westerners, or the bad Muslims who are not the way they should be.

"That kind of education leads to what we have today." The phenomenon, he said, is "Islam reacting to globalisation".

"The Muslim religion, as a religion that organises society, senses that that is finished, and they see it on the internet," he said.

At 62, Dardenne is three years younger than his brother. They have been making films together since the 1970s.

Their latest, The Unknown Girl, premiered at Cannes in May. — AFP