EXCLUSIVE: Belgian director Olivier Pairoux’s thriller Vigilante is being billed as one of the most ambitious feature projects set to come out of French-speaking Belgium this year.

Deadline can reveal a first look of French singer-songwriter, actor and rapper Eddy de Pretto in the lead role as principal photography gets under way.

De Pretto plays a lonely young man in his thirties who becomes a vigilante in defiance of a system that let let him down, trapping paedophiles by posing as a child on social networks.

When one of his friends, who is also a vigilante, is brutally attacked, the young man takes the law into his own hands. The move plunges him into a dark world where he comes face to face with former prey and the police, who despise the vigilantes.

De Pretto is joined in the cast by Roxane Mesquida ( Now Apocalypse, Fotogenico), Damien Chapelle (Don Juan, En corps), Zaccharie Chasseriaud (Hippocrate) and Leontine Clerbois (Arcane). 

The Paris-born artist is best known for his 2018 debut album, Cure, which, certified triple platinum.

Vigilante is produced by Annabella Nezri at Brussels-based Kwassa Films in co-production with Montreal-based Art & Essais and Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin and Laurent Baujard’s French company Paprika Films.

The film has received support from the Film and Audiovisual Center of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Proximus, VOO, BeTV, MEDIA Europe Creative, Wallimage and SODEC.

Talks are ongoing for the international sales mandate on the film, which is scheduled for a 2026 release.

Pairoux’s first movie was the kid-focused tale Spaceboy about a boy who secretly builds a hot air balloon as a gift for his father.