Discoveries from Netherlands World Cinema

Malika chases a career in basketball but feels constrained by a lack of financial resources that leads to insecurity about her future.

Meike and Ursula are planning to start a family. They arrange for a donor to help them. Meike is excited and ready. But is Ursula?

When Jesus looks into the eyes of Magdalena, she thinks her fate is to become a nun. Until an angel tells her what God really wants: she must give birth to 13 children each of whom have to be born on the 13th of the month. So Magdalena sets to work.

Emma comes face to face with colonial history when she receives a suitcase from her father-in-law. Inside is the (photo) archive of his grandfather Maarten de Niet; Attorney General and Acting Governor of Suriname from 1926 to 1953. During those same years, Emma’s Surinamese grandparents lived under his administration. Their houses were situated close to each other, but their worlds were separated by ancestry. Bagasi is a personal quest for the traces left behind by this past.

The Club of Sinterklaas runs into a big problem when the moonlight almost disappears. Without it, the rooftops are far too dark to deliver presents! Meanwhile, little Jurre creates even more chaos when he tries to walk across the rooftops with his own animals — just like Sinterklaas’s horse. The barn on the farm gets damaged, and when the animals temporarily move into Sinterklaas’s castle, they turn the place completely upside down. While Test, Coole, Dans, and the other Piets are so desperate that they even try delivering presents with drones, Pakjesavond is drawing ever closer...

‘Woman is Fickle’ is based on the famous aria from the opera Rigoletto by Verdi. No woman is safe from the dissolute Duke of Mantua, who dreams of naked, languid beauties. But he also complains about their capriciousness. The women in the film refer to famous paintings: by Matisse, Botticelli, Degas. The film is a trip through male fantasies, seen through the eyes of a woman.

A Silver Bear award winning short drama about the relationship between a father and his daughter.

When a rare deer gets spotted, two huntresses get their call to action in order to obtain their largerst trophy yet!

A man experiences a slow descent into madness while in isolation.

Marian and Ido are married and have a 16-year-old daughter, Pinkie. Marian and Ido's marriage has become boring. Ido is a conservative and neat furniture manufacturer, but secretly starts a relationship with the beautiful Emma, ​​his secretary. When Marian discovers this, she offers him a choice: stay with her or move on with Emma. Ido cannot make this choice, so Marian throws him out. Ido moves in with Ida, but continues to interfere intensively with Pinkie, who to his horror becomes friends with Wim, one of his Turkish workers.

Nine-year-old Tatiana is fine with her role as an interpreter for Mami. She can even use it sometimes to manipulate her mother who is poor at speaking Dutch. But then her mother’s health declines rapidly and they have a to consult a doctor.

A young woman recalls a day when she was attacked by three men on her way home, but daily life must resume its course.

When a cinema audience starts mocking the film they're watching, the events in the theater take an unexpected turn.

In his eighth comedy show the Dutch comedian Kees Torn reflects on his youth in a Reformed environment and how he lost his faith.

In a clean-cut suit, briefcase firmly in hand and a shiny pink piggy bank under his arm, Kamiel Maes, a groundskeeper for the parks department, stands at the door of the five-star hotel. The sliding doors open and the luxurious lobby appears. Whereas in everyday life Kamiel works in the park in front of the hotel and sees one Mercedes after another drive up, his savings have ensured that today he is standing on the other side of the door. In an overenthusiastic mood, Kamiel waltzes through the world of money and business. While everything seemed like a utopia to Kamiel, it turns out to be more of a world of unhappiness. Happiness proves to be relative, and the scents and colors of plants and flowers remain Kamiel's happy home.

This movie, made in 1969, documents the shattering story of a concentration camp survivor and his severe traumatisation, treated by Jan Bastiaans M.D. and his method of LSD psychotherapy.

The planned marriage between Premierpiet and Probleempiet is in jeopardy, scholars Hans and Frans Steenstra have been kidnapped, and a rare ruby has been stolen from the Rijksmuseum. The dangerous Dr. Brein is behind all of this. Sinterklaas must intervene and even sends his Pieten on a trip to Switzerland to prevent Dr. Brein's criminal organization from gaining power.

Mustafa is a hard-working and ambitious agricultural merchant who is cold and austere towards his family. One day he has a brain hemorrhage on a business trip and goes into a coma after the operation. Guler is suspicious of her husband having an affair. Veysel, their teenage son, wants to leave the military academy and study business administration. Ali, their 10-year-old son, has to cope both with his bully classmate and the chewing gums he has to sell. Hasan, Mustafa's younger brother, chose to live a life in solitude after getting a divorce, and has always been an outsider to the family. But now, with his brother in coma, he finds himself involved in family affairs. Hasan has to solve the mystery about Mustafa's mistress and the money lost during his trip.

Two astronauts try to rescue forbidden art treasures from a totalitarian regime by smuggling them on their mission to Jupiter. During their long space journey they then encounter some mutual disagreements.

Damion Dracula lives in a big house with his Siamese twin daughters and his staff. Agaath, his half-sister, and her daughter Florentina come over to stay for a few days. After that, two young female tourists also end up in his house. Dracula organizes a big party for his friends. When the party is going on, all kinds of terrible things start to happen and finally all hell breaks loose.

A mandatory drinking party turns into a hostage situation.

What happens if someone loses control over his own life and at the same time searches for grip in ascending and descending devices? A winterly story about loss, desire and airplanes.

Registration of the first solo theatre program by the Dutch actor, comedian and singer Alex Klaasen. Klaasen sings, among other things, a schizophrenia musical and a hymn to the turd.

Laila found a true companion in her stuffed animal Knor. But as see grows older she is forced to reconsider her infatuation with the little pig; are we ever truly too old for the things that make us feel whole?

A cylinder shaped cup falls and breaks into pieces. Every frame of this recorded movement is then manually translated into a ceramic layer that is made of the original remains of the cup. All the layers are then arranged vertically and glued together, forming a new object that visualizes the destructive moment. As this new form emerges gravity starts to shift pulling the new object into destruction as well. This cycle repeatedly keeps breaking the old to create the new, by translating destructive moments into higher dimensional forms.

Brought in by an ill wind, a stranger from another world falls to earth into the body of a young man. A glitch in this interchange hampers the alien consciousness to fully integrate in the new found carcass. We follow this being for a day in their muffled wander through earth.

After losing both his parents Ralph struggles with a depression. A year later he decides to slowly reduce his medicines with the help of his psychiatrist, although Ralph doesn't always follow his advice. On a rainy day Ralph has one of his usual appointments with the psychiatrist. As unusual as it is, this time the psychiatrist felt compelled to tell Ralph a dramatic story, inspired by a mysterious painting on the wall.

A young motorist intending to do a good deed for a laryngectomy patient at a gas station winds up in a hell of a mess.

In 2020, a rooster escapes in Békéscsaba, Hungary. For four years, the locals care for him as a beloved symbol of hope and unity – until his sudden, mysterious death shatters the community, replacing harmony with suspicion and division.

After two intifadas and the construction of the Israeli wall, the only Palestinian zoo is still there and is now seeking for international recognition and to replace their lost giraffes.

Awkward and touching moments at a wedding party where two ex-lovers are forced to spend the evening together. While the booze flows liberally and people around them are deliriously sweating and dancing to corny music, he makes advances. The initial chill between the former couple is extra painful because of the ebullient merrymakers and the budding happiness around them. Still, their love appears to have survived, although the old wounds haven’t completely healed either.

The movie tells the story of the farming family Van de Velde, in the aftermath of the First World War. The farmer and his son, who have fought in the trenches of the Yser, are still missing in 1919, and the mother has died, so the eldest daughter Coralie runs the farm now on her own. She has welcomed 25 orphans during the war, but the Child Welfare Commission wants to put them in an orphanage. And some local notables with a sneaky plan want to take possession of the farm. But Coralie and the orphans fight back...

A nuanced portrait of the (Amsterdam) police which portrays not only the police as an institution, but also individual officers. Issues raised include: ethnic profiling, lack of influence by neighbourhood officers, the role of women within the police force and the question of whether the police sometimes use excessive force, for example during the clearance of squats by the ME (Riot Police) in Amsterdam’s Kinkerbuurt neighbourhood, where defenceless locals were beaten by officers with batons.

Driven to gain control over her body and reproductive rights, an artist documents her procedure of human oocyte cryopreservation (freezing eggs). Her story tracks the medical and emotional impacts while addressing the position of the artist in society in relation to traditional family structures. Borrowing from the staging of hidden mother photography in the Victorian era, the artist invites the viewer to consider the expectations of holding a child ‘stable’ while fulfilling societal expectations in a precarious world.

On the Dutch coast, Kas(sandra) and Maartje meet for the first time in 7 years. The two friends were always different, but complemented each other perfectly. Now things are different: Maartje is spontaneous, slightly hedonistic, but knows what she wants. Over the years, Kas has found comfort and support in the recognizable. She quickly becomes upset when she notices that certain things no longer work the same way now that they are older. A dilemma arises in her mind: fall back into naive nostalgia, or move on to a new kind of relationship?

A young woman breaks out of the system that failed her, but falls into the next, the drugdeal business. She gets an unethical task to fulfill and with the time pressure slowly increasing, she has to act up.

London-based artist and photographer Muzi Quawson examines the lives of people situated at the fringes of the mainstream. She is drawn to individuals who tend to assert their identity via a blending of references informed by cinema, music and the history of popular culture. Doll Parts functions as a quiet study on the nature of identity.

Through a car accident, a young pilot gets to know a girl who works as a fashion model in the city. She leaves her fiancé in front of him and applies for a job as a stewardess. The inspection shows that she, like her brother, suffers from tuberculosis. The pilot abandons her, but her ex-fiancee comes to visit her at the sanatorium and marries her. However, their happiness is overshadowed by the death of their child from tuberculosis...

Johan, Hilde, Alwin, and Robert are walking through the forest. Suddenly, they see a man being beaten up by a few knights. They rush to the man's aid and chase the knights away. The man, named Casper, introduces himself and says that Knight Koen sent him. He has a message for Knight Bruno. The four take Casper to Bruno's castle, where he tells Knight Bruno his message: the green seal has disappeared. It has been stolen, and they suspect the black knight. Johan and Alwin set off together to retrieve the seal. But is Casper telling the truth? And was he really sent by Knight Koen?

Flanders, Post World War I. A traumatized ex-soldier and his obedient son go hunting every day in order to survive and take care of the mortally ill mother. Daily pushed to their limits, until there's a point of no return.

Registration of the second theatre program by the Dutch comedian Stefan Pop.

From the translucent golden eggs of the Tibetan bearded vulture to those of the British guillemot with their Jackson Pollock-like splashes, German ornithologist Max Schönwetter (1874-1961) collected them all. He devoted his life to oology, the study of birds’ eggs. But while Schönwetter created order in his world of eggs, chaos broke out in the world around him on the eve of the Second World War.

An intimate account of a thousand kilometer journey on a river in the Northeast of Brazil on a self-made raft carrying a small household including two children. The raft is the means of transport since time immemorial and the journey to the town of Teresina lasts about a month. Life in slow-motion, with fleeting encounters along the banks. When the family arrives in Teresina, the merchandise is sold, the raft dismanteld, branch by branch, leaf by leaf.

A non-binary person encounters an elegant but reluctant woman. When she begins to fall for them, a memory brings all to a sudden pause.

A cheerful pregnant woman on holiday with her husband and child encounters violence that lead to her demise.

A documentary about Amsterdam's music and cultural venue Paradiso.

Mutiny: Some caregivers party in a New Year’s Eve nursing home. Boarding: A Congolese family living in Germany is visited by a pretend social worker. Adrift: A man crushed by his community wanders in the medieval German countryside. Spanning three interlinked but stylistically distinct films, the triptych navigates the metaphoric and literal topographies of shipwreck as both rupture and reckoning, building a suggestive meditation on exile, identity, and the fractured condition of modern belonging.

Registration of the second theatre program by the Dutch comedian Alex Ploeg. 'EGO' consists of harsh jokes, songs and bizarre sketches about our ego. A performance about battling yourself and choosing uncertainty over certainty.

Two boys in the Fairytale Forest steal a broom from a maintenance vehicle. They run to the Fairytale Museum where they find a book with the story of Hugo. As soon as they start reading, the film begins. We see the young Hugo van den Loonsche Duynen in 1796. He robs a rich man. The oldest of the Bokkerijders chases him and asks if he really wants to learn the trade. After a few years, Hugo becomes one of the best and most notorious of the Bokkerijders. Then a successor must be found for the oldest. The battle is between Hugo and another Bokkerijder, Lodewijck, and is settled in Villa Volta in Hugo's favor. When he grabs the silver from the Villa, a ghost appears and curses him. He is banished to his own house and will only find peace when someone with a clear conscience enters his home.

Somewhere in a bombed city: transvestite heads show beautiful ladies hats. We see the latest fashion and hear cheerful music while the war continues.

After a strange dream, a young woman is abducted by aliens who try to take away her youth.

A fatally-timed invasion of privacy forces two male roommates to an all-too-intimate heart-to-heart.