Netherlands Film Production Incentive invests € 7.8 million in 15 new productions and 6 high-end TV-series
These contributions will generate more than € 31 million in production expenses in the Netherlands across the entire spectrum of Dutch film professionals and film companies.
In this round contributions were made a.o. to feature film Mitra by Kaweh Modiri, produced by Dutch BALDR Film in coproduction with In Good Company (Germany) and Snowglobe (Denmark) and to the remake of the British TV-drama Van der Valk (1972), produced by Company Pictures (UK) and Dutch NL Film & TV. Also, the children’s film My Dad Is a Sausage, directed by Anouk Fortunier, produced by Belgium’s A Private View, coproduced by Dutch production outfit The Film Kitchen has been granted a cash rebate.
All projects backed by the Netherlands Film Production Incentive in the fifth round of 2018:
Dark Rider (documentary) has been granted a financial contribution of € 34,946
Director: Eva Küpper (BE)
Script: Eva Küpper (BE)
Dutch co-producer: Volya Films
Lead producer: Serendipity Films (BE)
Logline: Ben Felten, an Australian national, was struck, in the prime of his life, by a progressive eye disease that rendered him slowly blind. Despite the considerable risk, Ben wants to break the world record and become the fastest blind motorracer on earth.
Dutch expenditure: sound engineer, composer.
Everything Is As It Should Be (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of
€ 710,680
Director: Ruud Schuurman
Script: Anna Pauwels
Dutch producer: Tom de Mol Productions
Logline: Immediately after the birth of their first child, Iris' friend Pieter confesses that he never wanted this child, has been having an affair for a year and will soon be leaving for Africa with his new love. Infatuated with self-pity and alcohol, Iris's early motherhood, her job as editor-in-chief of a reality show and her social life are seriously under pressure. All Iris wants is Pieter to come home again. She does not want to be like her unhappy single mother. With the help of her two girlfriends, her mother and the dog-walker, Iris gets her life back on track in the year that follows, she finds true love and becomes a responsible adult.
Dutch expenditure: except for a few shooting days abroad the entire project will be produced in the Netherlands.
The Judgement (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 437,375
Director: Sander Burger
Script: Bert Bouma, Sander Burger
Dutch producer: Bind & Willink
Dutch expenditure: the entire project will be produced in the Netherlands.
Losers * (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 101,000
Director: Jon Karthaus
Script: Jon Karthaus
Dutch producer: 2CFILM
Co-producer: Marmalade Films (BE)
Logline: During an annual school trip, four respectable teachers manage to lose a complete class of 12 teenagers in the heart of Paris. For a moment it looks like the students have played a prank, but when it turns out that it is probably a kidnapping, their small conventional world is completely turned upside down.
Dutch expenditure: director, cast, costume design, key hair& make up, DoP and composer.
Mitra (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 430,308
Director: Kaweh Modiri
Script: Kaweh Modiri
Dutch producer: BALDR Film
Co-producers: In Good Company (DE), Snowglobe (DK)
Logline: 37 years after her daughter’s execution in Iran, Haleh discovers the woman who betrayed her.
Dutch expenditure: shooting days, director, screenwriter, stunt supervisor, art department, costume design and technical crew.
My Dad Is a Sausage (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of
€ 133,687
Director: Anouk Fortunier (BE)
Script: Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem (BE)
Dutch co-producer: The Film Kitchen
Lead producer: A Private View (BE)
Co-producer: Man’s Films Productions (BE)
Logline: Zoë (12) is best friends with her father. When he gives up his banker's job in a whim and decides to become a professional actor, it comes to a quarrel between her parents. Zoë is afraid that her father has gone mad...
Dutch expenditure: cast, editor, composer, post-production image.
Paradise in the Desert (documentary) has been granted a financial contribution of € 54,668
Director: Ike Bertels
Script: Ike Bertels
Dutch producer: BALDR Film
Co-producer: Clin d'Oeil films (BE)
Logline: A seemingly harmonious society of black and white residents in a remote diamond town in the Namibian desert may lose its paradise due to the imminent closure of the mine. Will they let themselves be expelled from paradise, or will they stay to fight against the threat that their unique Oranjemund will become a ghost town, swallowed up by the sand?
Dutch expenditure: director, sound engineer, post-production sound and image, VFX.
Penoza (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 591,609
Director: Diederik van Rooijen
Script: Diederik van Rooijen
Dutch producer: NL Film & TV
Logline: The last chapter of Penoza is a grand finale. The film will tell a stand-alone story but there will be references to the five nerve-racking seasons for the series fans. The lives of the Wallraven family are uprooted when disaster strikes again.
Dutch expenditure: except for a few shooting days abroad the entire project will be produced in the Netherlands.
Pilgrimage (documentary) has been granted a financial contribution of € 38,270
Director: Ellen Vermeulen (BE)
Script: Ellen Vermeulen (BE)
Dutch co-producer: Volya Films
Lead producer: Inti Films (BE)
Logline: In 1952, Marie-Louise Chapelle is the first French woman on a virgin mountaintop in the Himalayas. By achieving this she hopes to end her desire to run away, but to no avail, because the next fifty years her life will be split in two, only half the time she spends at home with her husband and four children, while the other six months she wanders around the world with the guide Frendo. The filmmaker confronts the far-reaching consequences of Marie-Louise’s choices, and contemplates the inner battle of this passionate woman.
Dutch expenditure: post-production sound and composer.
Quicksand (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 217,500
Director: Margot Schaap
Script: Margot Schaap
Dutch producer: PRPL
Co-producers: Homemade Films (GR), Homeless Bob Production (EE)
Logline: Suze lives a warm-hearted, quiet life on an island in the north of the Netherlands with her husband Lucas and bubbly six-year-old daughter Juul. When her colourful, extravagant mother Helena all of a sudden pays a visit to inform her daughter that she’s ill, Suze slowly relapses into severe compulsive behaviour. When she finally realises the suffocating nature of their relationship, Suze makes an emotional but liberating choice.
Dutch expenditure: shooting entirely in the Netherlands with Dutch cast&crew.
Quo vadis, Aida? (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 187,874
Director: Jasmila Žbanić (BA)
Script: Jasmila Žbanić (BA)
Dutch co-producer: N279 Entertainment
Lead producer: Deblokada (BA)
Co-producers: Coop99(AT), Indie Production (FR), Razor Film (DE), Torden Film (NO)
Logline: English teacher Aida is in a UN base with her two grown up sons and husband. They are looking for shelter after the Serbian Army occupies Srebrenica. She is working as a UN translator, believing that she is safe with the UN. However, when the system of protection starts to fall apart, she has to rescue her family.
Dutch expenditure: cast, sound engineer, composer, VFX.
Sans Soleil (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 117,441
Director: Banu Akseki (BE)
Script: Banu Akseki, Freddy Malonda (BE)
Dutch co-producer: Volya Films
Lead producer: Frakas Productions (BE)
Co-producer: The Jokers (FR)
Logline: While solar eruptions threaten the earth, Cyril, a teenager adopted by a wealthy couple, has his birthmother Lea reappearing into his life after almost 10 years of absence. This marginal, excessive and fantasized character will upset the foundations of his personality.
Dutch expenditure: shooting days, production team, colorgrading and composer.
Save Sara (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 229,732
Director: Jan Verheyen (BE)
Script: Lien Willaert (BE)
Dutch co-producer: Kaap Holland Film
Lead producer: Eyeworks Film en TV Drama (BE)
Logline: I would do ANYTHING to save my child. A lot of parents might say that. Willem Massart does it. Based on a true story.
Dutch expenditure: DoP, sound engineer, post-production image and sound, composer, key hair&make up.
Sleep. (feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of € 182,606
Director: Jan Willem van Ewijk
Script: Jan Willem van Ewijk
Dutch producer: The Film Kitchen
Co-producers: Savage Film (BE), Uncorked Productions (US)
Logline: Traumatized by a gun violence incident, Jacob slowly loses his sense of reality as he drives across America with his beautiful, witty and troubled teenage daughter Sophie.
Dutch expenditure: director, cast, production design, DoP and post-production sound.
Where Is Anne Frank? * (animated feature film) has been granted a financial contribution of
€ 407,390
Director: Ari Folman (IL)
Script: Ari Folman (IL)
Dutch co-producer: Submarine Animation
Lead Producer: Purple Whale Films (BE)
Co-producers: Walking the Dog (BE), Samsa Films (LU), Bridgit Folman Film Gang (IL), Le Pacte (FR)
Logline: Kitty, the imaginary friend of Anne Frank, magically returns to life. She believes that if she is alive, Anne must be too. She leaves to search for Anne and discovers her story.
Dutch expenditure: various animation activities.
High-end TV-series:
Force The Final (drama) has been granted a financial contribution of € 339,312
Director: Marc Willard
Script: Joost Reijmers
Episodes: 20 x 10 minutes
Dutch producer: Pupkin Film
Logline: When righteous police officer Willem Niessen and reckless cowboy Theo Kamp wind up on the cast of a stolen priceless work of art, they find themselves in a world where a different truth lies hidden under each layer of varnish and where nothing is what it seems.
Dutch expenditure: the entire project will be produced in the Netherlands.
High Flyers (drama) has been granted a financial contribution of € 1,017,574
Director: Bobby Boermans
Script: Willem Bosch
Episodes: 8 x 45 minutes
Dutch producer: Tom de Mol Productions
Co-producer: The Storytellers Film & TV
Logline: High Flyers tells the story of Rutger, Guus, and Laila. We follow them during their years of heavy training to become a fighter pilot in the Royal Dutch Air Force, and we’re with them when they finally go on a dangerous mission in the Middle East. We stand close to these friends in their eventful journey to adulthood, we share their camaraderie, their grief, their joy, love, and fear, in times of peace and times of war.
Dutch expenditure: except for a few shooting days abroad the entire project will be produced in the Netherlands.
Red Light (drama) has been granted a financial contribution of € 807,473
Director: Eshref Reybrouck (BE)
Script: Esther Gerritsen, Frank Ketelaar
Episodes: 10 x 48 minutes
Dutch co-producer: Kaap Holland Film
Lead producer: Eyeworks Film & TV Drama (BE)
Co-producer: Warner Bros. International Television Production Nederland Drama
Logline: Three women get caught up in the world of human trafficking, prostitution and organized crime when the husband of one of them suddenly disappears. From completely different backgrounds the lives of these women intertwine and they find out they need each other to get out of the difficult situations they’re trapped in.
Dutch expenditure: screenwriters, shooting days, cast, editor, post-production sound.
Rudy's Crazy Christmas Show (drama) has been granted a financial contribution of € 517.286
Director: Anna van der Heide
Script: Luuk van Bemmelen, Martijn Hillenius
Episodes: 20 x 10 minutes
Dutch producer: Pupkin Film
Logline: When Rudy, a popular child pop star, is accidentally kidnapped by the parents of the seriously ill Sara, his family pulls out all the steps to find him. However, during the run-up to Christmas a bond grows between Rudy and Sara that makes Rudy doubtful about whether he wants to return to his old life in the spotlights.
Dutch expenditure: the entire project will be produced in the Netherlands.
The Singh Case (documentary) has been granted a financial contribution of € 195,000
Director: Hans Pool
Script: Hans Pool
Episodes: 4 x 50 minutes
Dutch producer: Submarine Docs
Logline: The Singh Case tells the story of Jaitsen Singh, a 73-year-old Dutchman of Surinam descent. He has spent almost half his life in the notorious San Quentin Prison in San Francisco and the Medical Facility Prison in Vacaville for a crime he probably did not commit. Rachel Imamkhan, a Dutch lawyer of PrisonLAW, a foundation that assists prisoners abroad discovered major wrongs in Singh’s criminal case and uses everything in her power to free him. The four-part documentary series is both a bitter legal drama as well as a gripping investigation into the circumstances in which Singh was convicted and the implications it has for him and his family.
Dutch expenditure: except for a few shooting days abroad the entire project will be produced in the Netherlands.
Van der Valk (drama) has been granted a financial contribution of € 1,096,029
Director: to be confirmed
Script: Chris Murray (UK)
Episodes: 3 x 90 minutes
Dutch co-producer: NL Film & TV
Lead producer: Company Pictures (UK)
Logline: A street smart and unapologetic Dutch detective navigates the lively and enigmatic city of Amsterdam, solving mysterious crimes using astute human observation and inspired detection.
Dutch expenditure: shooting days, technical crew, cast, editor and post-production sound.
* Re-submitted application
Production Incentive in 2018 & Production Incentive High-end TV-series
In 2018, a total amount of € 25.8 million Production Incentive has been granted. € 17 million was granted to film productions, € 8.8 million to high-end TV-series. Since the start of the Production Incentive for High-end TV-series (October 2017) a total amount of € 15.8 million has been granted to high-end TV-drama, animation and documentary series.
Upcoming application round 2019
The next application round for Netherlands Film Production Incentive for both film productions and high-end TV series is February 5, 2019. The Netherlands Film Production Incentive offers a financial contribution in the form of a cash rebate up to 35% on the qualifying production costs that are demonstrably spent in the Netherlands.