“Overwhelming.” That’s how Belgian film director Lukas Dhont describes debuting his first feature film, Girl, at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and walking away with four prizes. Although only 27 years old, Dhont has already established a reputation as a deft teller of interior stories that take root within one person but make emotional sense to all. The film probes the adolescent world of an ambitious transgender ballet dancer, Lara, played by Victor Polster. Dhont brings us achingly close to it all—Lara’s obsession with becoming a prima ballerina and the struggle to feel at home in the body she relies on to do it.

How would you describe your approach to filmmaking?
I went to a film school that combines documentary and fiction, so I make fiction films but with a documentary ...