‘Truly Naked’ Team Puts Real Intimacy Above Fake Pleasure: ‘Porn Is Like WWE. It’s the Fantasy That Pays the Bills’
“When porn has become the norm, intimacy is the new taboo,” reads an early tagline for Truly Naked, the directorial debut of Muriel d’Ansembourg, who has built a reputation with previous short films also desiring to explore blurring boundaries in similarly uncomfortable scenarios. Her debut is technically a ‘coming of age’ film, pun intended, as it explores the maturation of a quiet teenager whose existence as the cinematographer for his father’s family business, a pornography creator, defines him. As a conversation piece, it’s a thorny hot bed of topics, ranging from dysfunctional kinship roles to how Gen Z’s development has been irreparably fashioned by mature steaming content which isn’t an accurate depiction of human sexuality or relationships. At the same time, despite the provocative milieu, it’s a narrative which tends to play softball with its subjects, and leaves its audience with a sense of some harder questions left unasked.
Truly Naked | 2026 Berlin Intl. Film Festival Review
Boasting the tagline “when porn has become the norm, intimacy is the new taboo”, Muriel d’Ansembourg is under no illusions that her debut feature Truly Naked, with its dark themes and explicit sexual content, will require deft and sensitive handling.
Truly Naked had a very lengthy gestation, with the idea germinating in 2011. D’Ansembourg developed the script by herself before meeting Isabella Films’ Els Vandevorst whose producing credits include Martin Koolhoven’s Brimstone and Brian DePalma’s Domino. Gamila Ylstra, then director of Amsterdam-based talent development hub the Binger Filmlab, introduced them because, says d’Ansembourg, “she thought we could be an interesting team. We were both strong, spirited females, interested in films [about] intimacy”.
