Belgium's French speaking community selected the Belgian representative for Kiev tonight. In a final with two songs, Nuno Resende defeated Tiffany Ciely with a difference of less than 100 votes. With the song Le grand soir, Nuno Resende will be representing Belgium in Kiev.

This is the result of the Belgian final:

1. Nuno Resende – Le grand soir
Written by Alec Mansion and Frédéric Zeitoun
2. Tiffany Ciely – Lost paradise
Written by Tiffany Baworowski

RTBF presented its two songs “of exceptional quality” tonight. By SMS and televoting the viewers of La Une, the first channel of Belgium's French speaking community broadcaster RTBF, decided that Nuno Resende will represent Belgium at the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev. RTBF received thousands of votes. Less than 100 votes separated runner-up Tiffany Ciely from winner Nuno Resende.

Belgium's entry for Kiev Le grand soir (The big night) has been composed by Alec Mansion and Frédéric Zeitoun. Alec Mansion earlier composed the Luxembourgian entry Amour amour, performed by the Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand in 1987.

Tomorrow, both national final songs Le grand soir and Lost paradise will be released on single by EMI Belgium.

Celebration of 50 years Eurovision Song Contest
Jean-Louis Lahaye and Jean-Pierre Hautier, the hosts of tonight's national final, welcomed several guests who have participated in the Eurovision Song Contest before. The former Belgian representatives Fud Leclerc (1956, 1958, 1960 and 1962), Robert Cogoi (1964), Jean Vallée (1970 and 1978), Sandra Kim (1986) and Mélanie Cohl (1998) discussed the history of the Eurovision Song Contest and the most remarkable Belgian entries. In spite of a cynical remark about the poor results of their Dutch speaking friends, the Flemish entries did not get any attention.

Nuno Resende
Nuno Guilherme de Figueiredo Resende was born on 25th June 1973 in Porto (Portugal) and moved with his family to Belgium when he was twelve. Nowadays he is living in Brussels. Nuno Resende perfectly speaks French, Portuguese and English and has good notions of Spanish and Italian.

In 1997 Nuno participated in the song contest Pour la gloire, which was won by Mélanie Cohl (Belgium 1998 – Dis oui). In 2000 he finished 6th in RTBF's Eurovision Song Contest selections as leadsinger of the group La Teuf, performing the song Soldat d'amour. Recently Nuno Resende has been focussing on a career as musical artist, starring in Romeo and Juliette and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort.

Nuno Resende will be representing Belgium in the semifinal of the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Le grand soir.