Charlotte Verminck is a Belgian writer and director. She builds work at the intersection of cinema, movement, and human experience, driven by emotional truth and a deep belief in what film can do.
Founder of Above The Nerve, she has built her practice independently: financing her own productions, assembling her own teams, and developing her own international audience from the ground up. Above The Nerve exists because she chose not to wait. That choice has shaped a body of work recognised internationally for its emotional depth and distinct visual language.
Her work explores the interior life: thought, perception, selfhood, and the unseen forces that shape how we experience the world. Choreography and movement are central to her cinematic language, used not as decoration but as a way to make internal states visible: an extension of character, emotion, and the silent architecture of the mind. She trained in film choreography and movement direction with Francesca Jaynes, whose credits include Black Widow, Gravity, and Pinocchio, and with Dale Mercer.
She works as a writer-director with a strong authorial vision, originating her own stories and building each one into a complete world, shaped in close collaboration with the people who bring it to life. She thinks like an editor: from the first thought, she is already shaping the final cut.
“I’m drawn to work that people don’t just watch, but step into, where image, emotion, and atmosphere become something they can feel.”
Her short visual poem Pathless won Best Poetry Film and Best Experimental Film at international festivals, earned recognition from the Institute for Experimental Arts, and continues to screen internationally. It remains one of the defining early works of her practice.
Her narrative short film Mind of Thoughts, an exploration of self-doubt, internalised pressure, and the quiet weight of the inner voice, premiered at the 25th anniversary edition of the Beverly Hills Film Festival, screening at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. Charlotte conceived, financed, and produced the film herself, securing a six-figure budget by bringing sponsors and believers to the table, then leading fifty-five cast and crew across three countries to bring that vision to life.
The film has since toured internationally: opening the Ferrara Film Festival in Italy alongside Paul Haggis’s Oscar-winning Crash, gathering awards in Los Angeles, Barcelona, and New York, and being presented at Flanders House in New York. It has received critical recognition from The Hollywood Times, Shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival, and Selig Film News, among others.
Out of Mind of Thoughts grew something Charlotte had not set out to build. Following deeply resonant audience responses, including a premiere where Te Gek?!, Belgium’s leading mental health organisation, was present in support of the work, she developed the Mind of Thoughts Screening and Conversation Experience: the film, a behind-the-scenes documentary, and a live conversation on thought, self-perception, and the inner life. Extending the work beyond the screen, it is now presented to cultural institutions, universities, civic organisations, and private communities internationally.
Above The Nerve takes its name from Emily Dickinson’s idea of going above the nerve, past the place where fear lives. That philosophy shapes not just what Charlotte makes, but how she makes it. The house was founded on the belief that the strongest work emerges where every person on a team is valued, heard, and respected, never treated as a number in a production. That commitment is as central to its identity as the work itself. Today the house develops original narrative work for cinema, alongside films for fashion and luxury houses.
Charlotte’s love of storytelling began with poetry and editing. As a young girl she read and wrote poetry, and by ten she was shooting and editing her first films, with an instinct she has never lost. Poetry still runs through all her work, from Pathless to Mind of Thoughts, and into movement itself, which she approaches as poetry written with the body. She has a lifelong love of the cinema of the 1950s, whose elegance still informs her eye.
By seventeen, while studying International Communication and Media, she was already working as a video artist and creative director for the Belgian musician Ozark Henry, co-founding the experimental arthouse collective SOH. An internship at Little Minx, the Hollywood production company led by Rhea Scott, deepened her commitment to emotionally driven, authored cinema.
Her creative direction for fashion and portraiture, including a portrait series with Ozark Henry in Ann Demeulemeester, set out the visual language that runs through her films.
Her work has been featured in Sabato, awarded European Magazine of the Year, and The Hollywood Times, and profiled on VRT, Belgium’s national broadcaster. In 2025 she was named Honorary Citizen of her hometown on Belgium’s National Holiday, in recognition of her cultural contributions.
Beyond the screen, she is invited to speak on mental health, creative leadership, and building work independently. She is based in Belgium and works internationally.