Discoveries from Netherlands World Cinema

De Oplossing? is a movie about the dangers of racism and fascism. A group of Dutch young people is influenced by an ultra right political party.

Join André Rieu on his global adventures in Fiesta Mexicana as he finally recovers from illness to delight fans all over the world with magical performances of some of his best-loved music. Taking in the magnificent surroundings of Africa, Mexico and the sub-tropical Flower Island of Mainau in Germany, this emotional and exciting journey fully captures the enduring magic of The King of the Waltz. André’s performances include Mexican Hat Dance, Hava Nagila, La Paloma, Cielito Lindo, Amazing Grace, Earth Song, and many more.

Mario is a very successful violinist who marries Meina, a housewife. They are happy together until she starts a dancing career and becomes even more successful than her husband. Mario becomes jealous of his wife and estranges himself from her. They only become closer when his strict mother dies and their daughter is threatened.

Branko dwells on the fringes of Belgrade society. Isolated and unable to sleep, he speaks to no-one. His only obsession seems to be his younger brother, whose muddy shoes, bloodstained sheets, and murky whereabouts unsettle him. As paranoia sets in, Branko realises his brother isn't the strange one. He is.

A strange crea­ture washes ashore on an island where two scien­tists live and work. It appears to possess dark powers.

Two teenagers fall in love, but they’re from two different worlds with very opposite family backgrounds. Remy is intrigued by Juliyat. She’s cool and clever thanks to an eventful and challenging life. Juliyat likes Remy because he’s full of brightness and spontaneity. But being in love in hostile surroundings is no easy task. Desperately, the teenagers try to get together in public and then secretly. Remy and Juliyat is a modern day Romeo and Juliet. A story about loyalty, betrayal and the ability to see potential in everyone. A heart-warming and youth-driven drama where love conquers all in the end.

A silent seaside vignette from Henri Storck: weekenders (“day-trippers”) descend on the Belgian coast for brief escape—bathing huts, crowds, and playful beach routines rendered in quick, observational fragments.

Full of expectation, a 16 year old girl secretly travels from the city to a deserted, wintry island to visit her first great love. He is an elderly bartender at a beach tent, engaged, big, tough and strong. With his huge hands around her head and shoulders, she seems even younger than she is. But she feels loved and mature. But a morning of disenchantment awaits her.

On the brink of committing suicide, factory-woman Marianne meets a strange, silent man in a white suit. She offers him a place to stay, but finds out soon he is badly wanted by the regime. She doesn't care: the uniform, barbed wired world is a much better place with his warm body by her side. Marianne is never ever going to let this happiness being taken away form her.

Part of a series of found landscapes, filmed on a single 8mm roll.

Short film directed by Robin Peeters.

7 shots of animals in a pet shop.

Stranded travelers on a remote farm find themselves in a dire situation. Do they fall victim to a murderous father and his son?

Jesse and his girlfriend are silently driving their car at night, when he motions her to stop. In front of the car, they see a strange object. When Jesse gets out and approaches the mysterious colossus, it crackles. The first taps turn out to launch a rapidly escalating express train full of secret desires.

With his beloved boat taken ashore for repairs, a reclusive young sailor must make do on land for two whole weeks.

Short documentary about Wen Long, an intersex child. The nine-year-old is very happy that her parents give her the freedom to decide for herself whether she wants to go through life as a boy or girl. But that is not easy.

This film is Frans van de Staak's first full feature, for which he wrote 28 scenes and worked with a cast of 29 actors and 29 actresses. Each scene is performed by a male and a female; some scenes are repeated by different actors. Once again he financed this production from his own savings. (Wim Schlebaum)

Bassie & Adriaan go in search of a package in Germany, which Bassie likes because he fancies a trip along the Rhine. But Bassie doesn't realize that Handy Harry has built a transmitter into his Walkman and that the crooks can now follow him on a special screen. The crooks also see that Bassie & Adriaan are traveling to Greece. There, they have to track down a package with the help of a sailboat. This allows them to see a lot of Greece, but they don't know that there is a diver under their boat, which could be very dangerous!

A grizzly moves effortlessly through a vast landscape, as others flee from an unseen threat. Meanwhile, a human, driven by his own instincts, navigates the same terrain. Both apex predators dominate the top of the food chain, but their worlds collide when they cross paths.

The planet is exhausted, nature destroyed. The rich manage to survive, but the poor fight for the simplest life necessities, like a breath of fresh oxygen.

Kurdish Iranian filmmaker Beri Shalmashi travels from the Netherlands to the border with Iran in Iraqi Kurdistan, where she encounters activists who participated in the protests that were sparked by the death of Jina Amini in Tehran in September 2022. She explores first hand accounts of the current uprising and life as a Kurdish person under the oppressive Islamic regime. What is boiling at the edge of the revolution?

Now that contraception is controlled by women, men seem to experience carefree sexual freedom. In reality, they lose autonomy over their own seed. Director Lynn Deen started the film out of frustration: Why was the woman always the one to carry the burden that comes with lust? Gradually she saw that this luxury position actually places men in a dangerous position of dependence. They have virtually no control over both the prevention and the termination of a pregnancy. That is why they should be more involved in preventing pregnancy. Not only for women, but especially for themselves.

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.

Melanie is obsessed with the life of her possible donor father. Is she looking for a future or a past with him?

There’s a treasure trove of information to be found in the poisonous e-waste in Ghana. It’s a relatively simple matter to open up hard drives and gain access to photos and the personal details of their former owners. Equipped with a name and address, almost anybody can be found online. A young mother looks in astonishment at an American street that she has conjured up on Google Maps in a matter of seconds—this is Ama, one of the internet con artists in this film.

A black-and-white study of ennui and emotional disconnect, where ordinary gestures, of rising, walking, dreaming, fracture within a world already eroding.

Actually, Tomas knows his parents. Born in Brazil in 1993 and adopted from there, he now lives with them in the Netherlands. Now he is faced with the question of whether he should look for his biological mother, or if there are reasons not to do so.

When shaving cream seller Lou Helm is spotted by Anita Mara of the Odeon Revue, who thinks he was born to be a music hall star, he eagerly signs a contract and leaves his girlfriend Annie. His star career, however, does not turn out the way he planned...

A day in the life of three inhabitants of Hasaluth in 1951.

A father tries to force his son to undergo the same transformation he has had. An old man steps in to kill the brainwashed father, after which he and the boy go into hiding in a cabin in the woods. But are they safe there? Orwellian short uses simple methods to make the threat of the unknown evil palpable.

On Saturday, June 28th, 2008 the Hague rock band Kane gave a concert swirling in the Kuip in Rotterdam. Last year, Kane worked in New York for the recording of their fourth album. During this compelling stadium concert Kane spent much new work, but of course also big hits as Rain down on me, So Glad You Made It and Damn those eyes. "Playing at De Kuip has something magical," said Woesthoff. And it shows. Indeed, that splash off the screen as you watch this DVD!

A rare treat, courtesy of a Dutch airline, about air travel in the 1960s.

A cursed gambling machine must be destroyed by Arno when his friends get brainwashed.

Blender Studio’s 14th Open Movie is a high-visual-impact, action-packed 2-minutes-long animation inspired by the game cinematics and realtime demos formats.

József works at the largest still-operational grain silo in Budapest. He’s been doing this work for more than 30 years, and lives in a container home next to the structure, where trucks and trains rumble past his window. When he is lowered into the ten-story-deep silos to clean them, he looks like a scuba diver at work. These scenes are captured with stunning, contrast-rich camerawork, and ably edited with a strong sound design.

Registration of the ninth theatre program by the Dutch comedian Richard Groenendijk.

A journalist has to interview a blind photographer.

Like his Swiss half-sister Jasmin, Dutch filmmaker Alex Pitstra is the child of a European mother and a Tunisian playboy father. The majority of their lives their father was absent, but after more than twenty years Alex invites Jasmin to travel to Tunisia with him. They want to reconnect with their Tunisian roots and find out how their father and his family relate to the 'bezness' phenomenon of North-African men roaming beaches and hotels, trying to seduce western women.

The Dutch Roos and the Turkish Rana are two adolescent bosom friends who divulge all their secrets to each other in a diary. Whereas the philandering Roos is more interested in boys than in school, the reserved Rana tries to make the best of her study. The girls are very different, but share the desire to become famous, as well as the fact that at home nobody understands them. Roos' single mother is working all the time and Rana is completely fed up with her mother's traditional upbringing. When Rana's brother reads a passage from the girlfriends' diary to his mother, the situation escalates. Rana is put under house arrest and is no longer allowed to associate with Roos. For the girls, this is the limit: they take the first train to Turkey. The long journey becomes one great adventure, which not only puts their friendship to the test, but also brings about great changes on the home front.

Should the statues of Piet Hein be allowed to remain standing—and if so, with what message? Director Tim van den Hoff humorously portrays the abrasive relationship with our colonial past and the discomfort administrators struggle with as they care for their heritage. The simultaneous restorations of the statue of Piet Hein in his birthplace of Delfshaven, his mausoleum in the Oude Kerk in Delft, and a statue in Matanzas, Cuba (where the Silver Fleet was captured) offer a glimpse into the wondrous world of heritage and hero worship, and show how the myth of Piet Hein still lives on nearly 400 years after his death.

Short documentary about life at camp Westerbork, based on the diary of the journalist Philip Mechanicus, supplemented with images by Rudolf Breslauer. Comments from the historian Jacques Presser. Mechanicus' diary starts on Friday 28 May 1943 and ends on Monday 28 February 1944, five days before he is put on a transport to Auschwitz where he is murdered seven months later (12 October) by the Nazis.

"It was a kind of flywheel that you set in motion; I couldn't turn back at all," says Hans van Mierlo in the film about his political career. That career began in 1966 when he founded the political party D66 with a number of like-minded individuals. Clearly visible from the editorial office of the Algemeen Handelsblad on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam, the unrest was crowing, fueled by Provo. The pillar society, which had kept the Netherlands afloat for so long, was no longer adequate. That was his analysis, and a much more direct democracy would have to take its place.

In his third show, Daniël Arends argues that good deeds are a form of self interest, and evil deeds are a hobby.

Jon van Eerd is the driving force behind the renewed success of Dutch farce. Following 'One Zip Too Far,' Van Eerd returns this season with his own piece 'Double Trouble,' in which he plays a cunning plastic surgeon in a famous beauty clinic. He's not actually a doctor and makes his money easily with dubious treatments. But Van Eerd also portrays his bumbling twin brother who is forced to take the blame when the treatments don't go as planned. Lucie de Lange joins the chaos as the director of the institute, getting swept up in the hilarious tangle of mistakes and identity swaps. Once again, laughter proves to be the best medicine!

Sophie and Jessica are anthropomorphic beings that wander through different worlds – searching for themselves and for one another. Their bizarre and battered appearances are modelled with so much detail you can almost touch them.

Stones are at once the most foundational and the most overlooked parts of our lifeworld. When a retired nature documentary narrator passes a kidney stone, she decides to tell one more story about this forgotten world of stone . A hypnotic essay film asking urgent ecological questions, Apple Cider Vinegar takes the viewer on a journey meeting Palestinian quarry workers, passionate Britisch Geologist and People living on the lava fields of Fogo.