Laura Van Yck, Belgian Actress, Wins Award for “From a Barren State”

From a Barren State is the current project from Laura Van Yck, who was born and raised in Belgium. Laura is using her specific brand to succeed in the film industry. Laura has been on a rollercoaster of filmmaking projects, a few include Burned, Bloody Kiss, The Many Deaths of John Wick and the music video “Frailty” from the band Out of the Woods. Each project depict Laura is a perfect fit into the Horror genre.

In The Many Deaths of John Wick Laura was rewarded for her performance as the character “Death“, with the award for best actress from the Cult Critic Movie Awards.

Her most recent successes center on the horror short “From a Barren State“. The story revolves around Lena, a young woman at the end of her pregnancy, who ends up in the streets. She gets offered shelter by a seemingly kind couple. But, when Lena discovers their intentions are far from the kindness they have showed her, she concludes to make drastic and violent decisions.

The movie is written and directed by Priyam Sadhukhan, previously known as director of Welcome to Sunday and writer/director of Breakfree. Along with Laura Van Yck, the movie stars Sandra Bowes as Martha and Sean McCormack as George. The movie was produced by Ishan Mehra from IM Films, who is also known for Silent Noise, Deceived and Here I Am. The cinematography was done by Gurdeep Singh Sidhu.

For her lead role as Lena Laura was awarded as best actress by Calcutta International Cult Film Festival and won the Gold Award for Best Actress at Virgin Spring Cinefest. Additionally she received 2 nominations for best actress, from Indie Short Fest and IndieX Film Festival.

Director Priyam Sadhukhan, who won the silver award as best director at Virgin Spring Cinefest, stated that “as a director believes in building up scenes and characters together with the talent. I have been fortunate enough to have such a wonderful cast and crew. With very useful and amazing inputs from every talent on the film. Laura Van Yck was of great value as an actress in the film From a Barren State. She played the role of the protagonist in the film and she managed to open up several dimensions of the character through her impeccable acting skills. She has proved to be extremely valuable in building up of her character in the film and has had been associated with this project from pre-production days. She is extremely hard working and dedicated to the project she takes up and keeps contributing until the project is ready.”

Lena isn’t a character Laura is usually cast for. But she made Lena her own “Although I’m an actress, and it’s my job to embody different people, it’s much harder when you can’t find much similarity. This was the case with Lena’s character. I’m usually cast as a strong woman, and a lot of the time with supernatural ability. Lena, however, is vulnerable, alone, suppressed and threatened. Even though she gets much stronger in the end, she goes through quite a journey that can seem overwhelming and intimidating when you first take her on. But this was an opportune moment for me to prove myself with handling a character that is not up my alley. And I’m very grateful for the award and nominations I received!”

K Asif Chambal International Film Festival awarded Gurdeep Singh Sidhu for best Cinematography. Crown Wood International Film Festival awarded Sandra Bowes with best supporting actress. In addition the movie has been officially selected for numerous other film festivals, such as American Golden Picture International Film Festival.

The movie was received well by critics. Film critic Michael Therkelsen wrote on Horrorsociety that “From a Barren State is a coherent mix of horror, drama and a psychological thriller. It starts with a bang, with a pregnant woman walking alone through the desert, and dips into each genre as the story progresses. Although, it definitely ends its narrative clearly in the world of horror. I was expecting zombies or cannibals, to be quite honest, but Priyam Sadhukhan went with an original approach and dared to do a story that’s more poignant and thought provoking.”

Apart from From a Barren State, Laura also honored her brand by being the lead in the music video for the popular band The 69 Eyes. Next to Dusty Grave, the lead singer of Stellar Corpses, Laura acts as a possessed witch for the song “Burn Witch Burn”. The music video was only released recently and already received 30k views in one week.

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