Belgium has a working film industry. It has studios, tax shelter money, service productions from France and the Netherlands, and a stunt company that has been operating for more than twenty years. What it does not have is a place to become a stunt performer. If you are Belgian and you want this job, at some point you buy a train ticket.
That is not a complaint. It is the map, and nobody publishes it, so here it is.
What actually exists in Belgium
Two organisations matter.
Jump It, in Anderlecht, Brussels, opened the country's first stunt classes in September 2016 at the municipal sports centre. La Libre ran it under the headline « La première école de cascade s'implante à Anderlecht », the first stunt school sets up in Anderlecht. The classes cover acrobatics, stage combat, parkour and falls. It is weekly training rather than a qualifying course, and for a country that had nothing, that is a great deal.
Into Action, in Aalst, has existed since 2002. It is not a school, it is Belgium's established stunt company: action design, fight arranging, falls, fire, rigging, vehicle work, equipment hire. It was founded by Olivier Bisback, a sixth dan in taekwondo, who in 2004 became the first Belgian to graduate from the International Stuntschool in Seattle. A stunt company is not training. It is, however, where the work is, and that distinction is worth understanding early.
Everything else is adjacent: martial arts clubs, gymnastics halls, parkour groups, drama schools. All of it useful. None of it stunts.
What does not exist
There is no long-form Belgian course that takes you through the trade end to end, spread over two years, with fall installations, water, fire, and working coordinators who follow you from session to session.
That is not my opinion. It is what the man who opened the country's first classes said himself. Mathieu Vasquez, known as Mateo, an administrator at Jump It, told La Libre in 2016: « Il y avait un véritable manque de formation dans le pays. Tous ceux qui voulaient apprendre les trucs et astuces du métier comme moi, devaient partir à l'étranger… » There was a real lack of training in the country, and anyone who wanted to learn the trade had to leave.
Ten years later the sentence still holds. It is why almost every Belgian stunt CV has a French chapter in it somewhere.
Why everyone ends up in France
The European reference is Campus Univers Cascades, which opened on 12 April 2009 in Bias, in the Lot-et-Garonne, and moved in June 2017 to Le Cateau-Cambrésis, in the Hauts-de-France.
Its format is published and easy to check: a twelve-day discovery course, and a professional programme of ten twelve-day sessions spread over two years, five sessions a year, around four hundred hours in total.
That format explains a lot. It is not compatible with full-time study. It is not compatible with a job that will not release you for twelve days every two months. It assumes accommodation, travel, and a second income for two years. The barrier to entry is not only physical, it is logistical, and the logistics are what remove most candidates.
What is worth having before you go
Nobody arrives at a stunt course from a standing start. You arrive with a base, and the base is built at home, cheaply:
- A combat sport practised in a club, with partners, not alone in front of a video. Foreign registers ask for exactly this. The British Stunt Register, founded in 1973, requires six sporting disciplines verified by independent bodies, and a martial art is compulsory among them.
- Floor gymnastics. Rolling, falling, landing, knowing where the ground is when you cannot see it.
- Swimming, properly. Water comes up more often than people expect, and diving is a listed discipline in its own right.
- A driving licence, and real driving behind it.
- Languages. A Belgian performer who works in French, Dutch and English covers three markets. On a Flemish set, a safety call is given in Dutch, and you do not want it repeated for you.
What it costs in time
Two years of sessions, then however long it takes to be called. Nobody leaves a course with a full diary. Stunt work is passed from coordinator to coordinator, and the recommendation comes off a set, not off a certificate. So you budget for the training, and then you budget for the wait, and the wait is longer than the training.
My route, with dates
I am giving it because nobody gave it to me.
- August 2023: first course at Campus Univers Cascades.
- December 2023: started taekwondo, in a club.
- 2024: back at the Campus for the selection course, then admitted to the two-year programme, six taken out of twenty applicants.
- 2024 and 2025: the programme, between Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Paris and Brussels.
Alongside it there was work: commercials where I was hired as a stunt performer, a short film where I was both the actress and the stunt, a season of a series as a stunt double. None of those jobs came from the school. All of them came from people I met at the school.
The one thing to take away
Belgium can train you and Belgium can employ you. It cannot take you through the trade over two years. While that stays true, the Belgian route looks like this: build the base at home, get the technique in France, come back and work both sides of the border. That is not a handicap, it is a plan. It is simply better to know it at twenty than to discover it at twenty-five.
Sources: La Libre, 23 August 2016 · Into Action · Campus Univers Cascades · Campus Univers Cascades on Wikipedia · British Stunt Register