Instinct

Halina Reijn : 2019

Nicoline, an experienced psychologist, starts a new job at a penal institution. She meets Idris, a sex offender who, after five years of treatment for a series of extremely violent sexual assaults, is about to go on his first unaccompanied probation. His team of practitioners are enthusiastic about his development but Nicoline is vehemently opposed, concluding after only a few short meetings that he still poses a great danger to society. Unable to sway her colleagues, she concedes, but also begins to notice her own inability to resist the rush of Idris's manipulation. As her intrigue quickly escalates to infatuation, Nicoline recognises in Idris something unsettled in herself. And where intent is both unimportant and unclear, the two then find themselves face to face in a grippingly quiet yet stomach-churning battle for power and control, in which there can be no true winner. Halina Reijn's feature, her directorial debut, was winner of the Variety Piazza Grande Award when it premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2019. The film received the Cineuropa Prize, Youth Jury Award and the award for Best Actress when it screened in competition at Les Arcs Film Festival 2019.

Mies

Mirthe Fernandes : 2019

Mies, in her early twenties, seems an average young woman at first glance. Silent one day, lively the next. When things go well, she opens herself up to the outside world, after which it can change within a few seconds. She then becomes a self-centred doll that no longer speaks a word. Mies lives her life slightly differently from the average young woman on her way to independence. Mies is not only concerned with her own thoughts, but also with a number of other voices and opinions that haunt her mind. Those voices determine her life. What is it like to sometimes live in a closed ward of the clinic for months while the only thing you want is freedom? What Mies experiences is dissociation, another reality that is for her reality. An intimate portrait of the experiences and perceptions of a young mentally ill woman, but a person who is much more than her diagnosis. Mirthe Fernandes's short documentary screened in competition at Nederlands Film Festival 2019.

Mies (Official site)

Take Me Somewhere Nice

Ena Sendijarević : 2019

Can you simultaneously be two things or does that make you neither? Alma is in between everything: raised in the Netherlands by Bosnian parents, no longer a girl, but not really a woman yet. She hardly knows her father, but when he is admitted to a Bosnian hospital she decides to visit him one last time. This starts a journey with an unknown destination as Alma discovers herself and her country of origin. Cousin Emir unenthusiastically hosts her, but is too busy with shady deals to take her to the hospital in another town. His friend Denis, a complete layabout, gives Alma more attention. The film ups the weirdness as if reality itself is off-centre. Unusual camera angles and a minimalist plot introduce us to the mindset of a teen to whom everything is new and nothing is strange. Ena Sendijarević's feature debut was winner of the Special Jury Award when it premiered in competition in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019.

Alice in the Cities

Wim Wenders : 1974
Alice in den Städten

German writer Philip Winter has missed his publisher's deadline for writing an article about the United States. Attempting to book a flight from New York City, he discovers that there is an airline strike in Germany. He meets a German woman, Lisa, and her young daughter, Alice, who are also trying to return home. After Lisa leaves Alice temporarily in Philip's care, she disappears to deal with a relationship she has recently terminated. Philip and Alice take a flight to Amsterdam on the expectation that they will meet Lisa there, only to find she never arrived at the airport. When Alice is unwilling to stay in the Amsterdam airport alone while Philip leaves, the two decide to return to West Germany where Philip can deliver Alice to her grandmother's home. Unfortunately, Alice can't remember her grandmother's name or address, except that she may live in Wuppertal, the only clue being a photograph of her grandmother's front door with no house number and no one in the shot. After searching through Wuppertal, Alice admits her grandmother doesn't live there and that she only wanted them both to stay in Amsterdam. Enraged, Philip turns Alice over to the police, but Alice walks out of the police station and returns to him remembering that her grandmother lives in Ruhr. The two begin to bond as they travel to Ruhr, and the search comes to an end when the police spot them and inform Philip that Lisa has been found. Philip cannot afford to buy a train ticket so as he is saying goodbye to Alice at the railway station she gives him the money so that he can go with her on the train. He accepts Alice's offer and the film ends with the two of them riding a train back to Munich.

The Paradise Suite

Joost van Ginkel : 2015

A mosaic drama with five storylines about a variety of colourful characters that have moved, voluntarily or involuntarily, to Amsterdam in pursuit of a better future. The lives that they are leading now are not what they hoped for, but instead of settling for the situation, they choose to change it. Each individual's decision has a strong impact on the life of another, which then influences the next character and so on. By confronting their dark past and insisting on their humanity within, they make the choice to fight for their dreams and for the ones they love. Joost van Ginkel's second feature is an intense and energetic exhibition of human strength and the appreciation of life.

Lucia de B.

Paula van der Oest : 2014
Accused

Nurse Lucia de Berk has been present at one inexplicable death too many, a baby only a few months old. The hospital alerts the police. The young and ambitious public prosecutor Judith Jansen gets the file Lucia de B. on her desk. The investigation into the 'Angel of Death', as the press call Lucia, is heavy. Lucia left no traces and refuses to talk to the detectives, but a blood test connects her and she is eventually sentenced to life imprisonment for four murders and three counts of attempted murder. But something keeps troubling Judith. She discovers inconsistencies in witness statements and even the suppression of lab evidence. There are questions as to the reliability of the test and Judith begins to have doubts. Ignored by her superiors, Judith teams up with Lucia's lawyer, but at every appeal the original guilty verdict is confirmed. Things look bleak until they get the media involved and the biggest miscarriage of justice in Dutch history is finally reversed. Based on a true story, Paula van der Oest's feature was awarded the Gouden Film on behalf of the Nederlands Film Festival and the Nederlands Filmfonds. Her film screened in competition at Bari International Film Festival 2015.

Zomer

Colette Bothof : 2014
Summer

Anne is sixteen and lives in a remote village in southern Netherlands. A forgotten spot where the seemingly endless fields are dominated by the omnipresent power plant, where electricity cables criss-cross the sky and never stop humming. Anne's circle comprises her classmates and kids from the surrounding villages, all adolescents heading for adulthood. On weekdays they cycle to school through the fields into the wind. During the weekends they race along dike roads or go boating in the river. The mood is sultry as hormones churn around their bodies. Anne is a bit of an outsider and through her eyes we observe the young people whose lives are closely linked to hers. It's a small village and everyone is connected to everyone else. During this sweltering summer, Anne starts to feel lonely and detached until she meets Lena, who is new in town. Lena rides a motorbike and wears leather gear and is obviously different from everyone else. They meet at the fuel station where Anne works at the weekends. Anne quickly develops feelings for Lena, but they are feelings that she cannot fathom. However they are so intense that she can't turn and walk away from them either. Love unfolds in all its tender awkwardness. Things come to a head one evening when Anne and Lena leave the village disco together and head to the meadow. They are followed, mocked and insulted by the disco crowd. However, this only strengthens their love. Their burgeoning relationship is something Anne is not prepared to give up without a fight. A film about growing pains, about young people craving independence whilst also needing to fit in, and a young woman who dares to be different. Colette Bothof's feature premiered in competition at Nederlands Film Festival 2014, and screened at BFI Flare London 2015.

Zurich

Sacha Polak : 2015

When Boris, a lorry driver and father of their daughter Pien, is killed in an accident, Nina discovers that he had been leading a double life during their ten-year relationship. He was married to another woman and had three children with her. The shock of both the sudden loss and his betrayal totally derails the young woman, their life together transformed into a lie. Nina goes to ground in the anonymous world of motorways and service stations, and once again, finds herself in a long-distance lorry driver's bed. She spends a couple of days with him, he even introduces her to his children, before she ends up back on the road, restless and constantly on the move to avoid ever having to look back. Sacha Polak's second feature won the CICAE Art Cinema Award when it premiered in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Bloedlink

Joram Lürsen : 2014
Reckless

Two ex-convicts, Victor and Rico, have masterminded a foolproof plan to abduct 25-year-old millionaire's daughter Laura Temming. With the kidnapping they want to make the deal of their lives. When they sweep Laura away in a van in broad daylight and hold her in a flat, negotiations with her father about the ransom soon begin. But gradually the balance of power between Laura and her abductors shifts. Exactly who is the perpetrator and who is the real victim? Joram Lürsen's feature premiered in competition at Nederlands Film Festival 2014.

A Long Story

Jorien van Nes : 2013

Following the death of his French wife, Ward returns to the Netherlands after years of absence. He wants to move back to the village of his birth and hires a Romanian handyman, Doru, to fix up his house. Ward misses his wife and struggles to settle into the local lifestyle. One day Doru doesn't show up, and Ward impulsively takes charge of Doru's mischievous nine-year-old son Mihai. When they can't reach Mihai's mother Alina for the regularly scheduled cellphone call, they decide to drive to Romania. What they don't know is that Alina, who has stayed at home with her other two children, and has gone down to the Black Sea for a few days of vacation, is also frantically trying to reach her husband and son. Their journey brings both Mihai and Ward home, but Ward must now reconcile himself with his past and his future. Jorien van Nes's feature debut premiered at Nederlands Film Festival 2013, and screened at International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg 2014.

Strefa nagości

Urszula Antoniak : 2014
Nude Area

Love doesn't unfold like a story. Only the first and the last chapters are known. Love starts from Love and ends in Letting go. In between there is tenderness and cruelty, waiting and fulfilment, ecstasy and disappointment. If love is a discourse, these are her figures of speech. An adolescent love between two girls, Naomi and Fama, one Dutch, the other Arabic. Childish cruelty is mixed with full-blown sensuality. Dreams and life reflect and complete each other. The end is known, the story will be told after the love is gone. Urszula Antoniak's third feature premiered at Gdynia Film Festival 2014, and screened at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2014.

Tussen 10 en 12

Peter Hoogendoorn : 2014
Between 10 and 12

A piece of news, delivered by two officers in a police car, changes the lives of a family forever. As the journey to track down the next of kin progresses, the vehicle becomes more and more crowded with family members, picked up from home, work, the hairdressers. As they sit in the back seat, alone with their thoughts, what they thought they knew about life, about relationships, has been violently altered. Peter Hoogendoorn's feature debut premiered at Venice Days 2014.

IJspaard

Elan Gamaker : 2014
Icehorse

A man wakes up from a recurring nightmare in which he and two friends have some months earlier knocked down a young woman and, instead of going to the police, buried her body. When he begins to see the dead woman walking through the streets of Amsterdam, he attempts to find out what happened, and whether his horrific dream is in fact a memory. Elan Gamaker's second feature, an unusual psychological drama, premiered at Durban International Film Festival 2014.

After the Tone

Digna Sinke : 2014

Onno is not available. Lots of friends and relatives leave a message on his answering machine, but Onno doesn't ring back. In fact, there is no interaction between the characters in the film at all. All the dialogue consists of messages left on the voicemail of Onno – the person everything is about and whose voice we never even hear. Onno is conspicuous by his absence: he suddenly disappeared, leaving people behind in confusion, fury and despair. Through the messages left for him, we slowly start building up a picture of Onno, of the relationships the different speakers have with him and what he means to them: his professional partner, his mother, his sister, his girlfriend, his phantom ex-lover. The footage accompanying the voice-overs is of the places that belong to the relevant voices: a container dock, suburban open space, water surrounded by waving reeds, an office building, motorway, the car park of a mega-store. We see what the callers see. But we don't see Onno. A clear and precise film about a man who had everything but didn't want it anymore. Digna Sinke's experimental feature premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014.

Walking on the Beach

Caspar Pfaundler : 2013
Gehen am strand

Anja is getting nowhere. Neither her academic career nor her private life are making any headway, and listlessness turns into depression. She has retreated to finish her master's thesis, but as much as she tries, she is stuck in her work. This situation seems to repeat itself with her relationship to her boyfriend Paul. When her grandmother dies and the family gathers at the funeral in The Hague, Anja flees to the seafront to come to terms with her loneliness. Walking the beach she feels her solitude and starts to see herself in a different light. From the intensity of her emotions there emerges a new self-perception. Caspar Pfaundler's second feature premiered at Diagonale Graz 2013, and screened at Belgrade International Film Festival 2014.

A House in Berlin

Cynthia Beatt : 2014

Stella unexpectedly inherits an old house in Berlin from her Jewish great-uncle. Due to the dramatic history of this building, which has gone through various changes throughout the 20th century, she will have to fight for the right to claim ownership of her inheritance. Willing to do this, she embarks on a personal journey into the past that turns out to be more complex and ambiguous than she ever could have expected. A conceptual quest full of suspense, depicting a person who gets a chance to find her 'secret homeland' as well as rediscover herself. Cynthia Beatt's feature, a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, challenges our 'common knowledge' about the genealogy of contemporary Europe. Her film premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014.

170 Hz

Joost van Ginkel : 2011

The unconditional love between 16-year-old Evy and 19-year-old Nick has no voice and no sound: they are both deaf-mute. The whispering young lovers communicate in sign language, with their gaze, lips and touch. Evy's upbringing has been sheltered, she attends secondary school, but feels like an outsider. Nick is a non-conformist, a rebel and a thorn in the side of Evy's father. When they sense their parents' opposition to them being together, they develop an audacious plan: they will flee and hide in a special place, where Evy will become pregnant and have a baby. They are convinced that once they have a child together nothing and nobody will be able to keep them apart. Nick takes the initiative and drives off with Evy to the hiding place he has meticulously prepared, the wreck of a former Soviet submarine in a distant part of the harbour. Within that metal casing full of sounds and tremors they cannot hear, but with their strongly developed remaining senses, can feel all the more, they concentrate on their baby project. But as Evy slowly discovers, Nick had another reason to disappear and she begins to realise that their freedom is just an illusion. 170 hertz refers to the topmost bass frequency that Nick can still hear. Sound, and its absence, is an important part of the film. Told from the point of view of the deaf characters, the sound design clearly demonstrates the impact of living without the sense of hearing. Joost van Ginkel's debut feature premiered in competition at Nederlands Film Festival 2011.

Hemel

Sacha Polak : 2012

Hemel changes her sexual partners at an even quicker pace than her father Gijs changes his girlfriends. Since the death of the mother, the father and daughter have had an unusually close, at times even overly intimate relationship which tolerates no real commitment in their respective affairs. When Gijs dumps his girlfriend Emma at a party, Hemel's "secret" triumph is written all over her face. She is thus all the more shaken when her father falls in love with Sophie for real, whom Hemel snidely refers to as "her new mother" and who is now to move in with them. Tinged with empathy and sadness, the film takes a painfully precise look at the life of a troubled young woman who uses her sexuality to provoke in a scathingly aggressive manner but ends up doing the most damage to herself. Sacha Polak's debut feature won the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Twin Sisters

A film by Ben Sombogaart, based on the novel by Tessa de Loo.

Following the deaths of their parents in the 1920s, twins Anna and Lotte Bamberg are cruelly separated at the age of six. Contact between the two is immediately broken and the sisters grow up in separate worlds. Anna is sent to work on her uncle's farm in rural Germany, growing up in harsh circumstances, denied an education, and living amongst ignorant and brutal people. Lotte, who suffers from tuberculosis, is welcomed into a loving home by her upper middle class Dutch relatives where her health is restored and she receives a good education. For many years the girls try to contact each other but both families intercept their letters, making each believe that the other sister is dead.

Both attempt to renew their bond several times but fail each time for different reasons. The story follows their lives as they eventually meet and try to reconcile their differences while World War II impacts each of their lives in different ways. Anna marries a young Austrian SS officer, while Lotte becomes engaged to a Jewish musician – following different and opposing paths, both sisters' lives are irrevocably changed. More than half a century later, Anna seeks out her unwilling sister, only to find that their different experiences during the war years has damaged their relationship possibly forever.

A deeply moving story focusing on the loyalties, fates and passions of two women torn apart by war.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

A film by Peter Webber

In order to support her family, seventeen-year-old Griet becomes a maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer and soon attracts the master painter's attention. Although worlds apart in upbringing and social standing, Vermeer recognises her intuitive understanding of his work and slowly draws her into his mysterious world of art and passion.

Whilst she falls increasingly under Vermeer's spell, his volatile family quickly grow jealous of her. Maria, his shrewd mother-in-law, struggles to maintain the family's lavish lifestyle, and seeing that Griet inspires Vermeer, takes the decision to let their relationship develop. Van Ruijven, also sensing the intimacy between master and maid, commissions Vermeer to paint Griet's portrait.

Adapted from a work of fiction by author Tracy Chevalier, the story suggests the events surrounding the creation of the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring by the 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. Little is known about the girl in the painting, but it is speculated that she was a maid who lived in the house of the painter along with his family and other servants.