Netherlands Film Production Incentive invests € 8.2 million in 18 new productions and 4 high-end TV-series

These contributions will generate more than € 33 million in production expenses in the Netherlands across the entire spectrum of Dutch film professionals and film companies.

All projects backed by the Netherlands Film Production Incentive in the third round of 2021 are:

Filmprojects

Above the Dust (feature)

Script: Wang Xiaoshuai (CN)
Driector: Wang Xiaoshuai (CN)
Dutch co-producer: Lemming Film
Lead producer: DongChun Films Company (CN)
Logline: Above the Dust shows life in the contemporary Chinese countryside and the historical changes that families - living in these areas - experience in a panoramic perspective.
Granted support: €238.695

All Inclusive (feature)

Script: Dorien Goertzen, Richard Kemper
Director: Aniëlle Webster
Dutch producer: Greenfield Film Productions
Logline: In this abrasive drama/comedy, Jacco and Sylvie's shaky marriage is heavily tested during their vacation (with kids) in an All-Inclusive resort. Primarily Jacco has difficulties to embrace the paradisiacal All-Inclusive culture, while struggling with his midlife crisis and trying to save his marriage and the relationship with his children.
Granted support: €350.000

Life as it should be 2 (feature)

Script: Anna Pauwels
Director: Ruud Schuurman
Dutch producer: Tom de Mol Productions
Co-producer: A Private View (BE)
Logline: Happily ever after is hard work, especially for whimsical Iris: a new baby, her upcoming marriage and especially 'The Whore Suus' almost push her over the edge.
Granted support: €571.440

Casa di David (feature)

Script: Bert Wagendorp, Nicole van Kilsdonk
Director: Nicole van Kilsdonk
Dutch producer: KeyFilm
Co-producer: Superotto Film Production (IT), Prime Time (BE)
Logline: When childhood friends André, Bart and David, all in their 50s, go to work in friend Joost's town villa in Ferrara, they no longer prove immortal. They exchange still effortlessly heavy seriousness with trivial lightness and banter, but that does not escape the fact that they are getting older. Loyalty, fate and humor as a lifeline prove to be sorely needed to face the next phase in their lives. Especially when it turns out that David has lured them to Ferrara under false pretenses.
Leading roles are played by Wilfried de Jong, Kasper van Kooten, Wim Opbrouck and Leopold Witte.
Granted support: €196.360

Hotel Sinestra (feature)

Script: Martijn Hillenius
Director: Michiel ten Horn
Dutch producer: Keplerfilm
Co-producer: Zodiac Pictures (CH)
Logline: When Ava (11) wishes on a whim to get rid of her overprotective parents during a winter holiday in Hotel Sinestra, next morning all grown-ups have miraculously disappeared. The party goes wild: the kids can do whatever they want! Until eventually a life-threatening situation arises and Ava and the other children go all out to get their parents back after all.
Granted support: €602.860

Misfit Next Gen (feature)

Script: Ernst Gonlag
Director: Erwin van den Eshof
Dutch producer: NewBe
Logline: Noah is excited to start at Hoogland Highschool, which is known to compete in the yearly dance contest ‘Dance United’. When she gets enrolled at another sports-oriented school, she decides to swap places with Jessey, who did get accepted at Hoogland. Will Noa succeed and win the contest?
Granted support: €201.500

Only You (feature)

Script: Anna Pauwels
Director: Jonathan Elbers
Dutch producer: Tom de Mol Productions
Logline: On her bachelorette night, the insecure Elisabeth meets the love of her life, Arthur. The following weekend they spend together is the beginning of the end.
Granted support: €357.929

Panda Bear in Africa (animation feature)

Script: Richard Claus, Karsten Kiilerich (DK), Robert Sprackling (VK)
Director: Richard Claus, Karsten Kiilerich (DK)
Dutch producer: Cool Beans
Co-producer: A. Film Production (DK), Le Pacte (FR), Comet Film (DE)
Logline: A fun and adventurous young Panda travels from China to Africa to rescue his best friend, Jielong the Dragon, who has been kidnapped. On his journey he discovers a world completely unknown to him and faces frightening hippos, suspicious hyenas and wise gorillas. Relying on his wits (and some new found friends) he makes his way across Africa, before rescuing Jielong and saving his new friends' jungle home. A family entertainment comedy, a fish out of water/coming of age story.
Granted support: €1.014.446

Rheingold (feature)

Script: Fatih Akin (DE)
Director: Fatih Akin (DE)
Dutch co-producer: Lemming Film
Lead producer: Bombero International (DE)
Logline: Xatar means “danger” in Kurdish. Giwar Hajabi already learns a lot about danger at age three when he is arrested together with his politically active parents in Iraq. Later, as a refugee in Germany, he manages to rise from the ghetto to the top of charts in the music business. To get there, he himself becomes dangerous.
Granted support: €99.012

Rift in the Ice (feature)

Script: Maja Miloš (RS)
Director: Maja Miloš (RS)
Dutch co-producer: Volya Films
Lead producer: Bas Celik (RS)
Co-producers: Nightswim (IT), SPOK Films (SI), Propeler Film (HR)
Logline: Rift in the Ice is a contemporary fairytale that explores women's integrity in our harsh reality.
Granted support: €65.001

Sea State 9 (feature)

Script: Philip Delmaar
Director: Bobby Boermans
Dutch producer: Storytellers Film & TV
Logline: When an arrest is made in Aruba that quickly escalates into an international armed conflict, the Dutch government is taken completely by surprise. While everything goes south, three sworn friends, training to be marines, must in the midst of this pandemonium decide what is the right thing to do.
Granted support: €556.963

The Silent Treatment (feature)

Script: Caroline Strubbe (BE)
Director: Caroline Strubbe (BE)
Dutch co-producer: Volya Films
Lead producer: Minds Meet (BE)
Co-producer: Laokoon Filmgroup (HU) , Artemis (BE)
Logline: Tess (18), a Flemish girl with Stockholm syndrome, stalks the introverted Szabolcs (40) and his girlfriend Andrea in Budapest. Andrea secretly approaches the young stalker and helps her confront Szabolcs with their common past. Gradually all three discover how much their tragic background influences their current relationships and learn to reconcile themselves with it.
Granted support: €92.137

Skunk (feature)

Script: Koen Mortier (BE)
Director: Koen Mortier (BE)
Dutch co-producer: BALDR film
Lead producer: CZAR Film & TV (BE)
Logline: Skunk is about Liam, a neglected teenager that grows up with marginal, aggressive and addicted parents. Because of this dilapidated situation Liam is forced into a closed institution, where life is rock hard. He is able to find some peace with help of Pauline, his counselor.
Granted support: €142.184

The Wandering Dust (documentary)

Script: John Albert Jansen
Director: John Albert Jansen
Dutch producer: MOONDOCS
Co-producer: Oogland Filmproducties
Logline: The Wandering Dust is a story of one of the most remarkable books in world literature, how it came about and how it was received. Nowhere else the banality of fascism is so mercilessly exposed as in this novel. By seemingly poking fun at it, Edgar Hilsenrath provokes moral and existential questions. The Nazi and the Barber is an ingenious study of crime and punishment, a social-psychological perspective regarding the question of how and why human beings are capable of committing atrocities. The director examines the current meaning of the book against the background of the turbulent life of the author Hilsenrath, and reflects on his relationship with Germany.
Granted support: €72.116

Stromboli (feature)

Script: Roos Ouwehand, Paula van der Oest
Director: Michiel van Erp
Dutch producer: Levitate Film
Co-producer: De Familie Film & TV
Logline: Sara arrives on the island of Stromboli with a suitcase full of vodka and an exhausted heart and ends up at a retreat where, along with a motley crew of other wandering souls led by the charismatic guru Jens, she confronts the demons of her past.
Granted support: €430.443

Torch Song (feature)

Script: Jeroen Houben
Director: Jeroen Houben
Dutch producer: Family Affair Films
Logline: Torch Song tells a contemporary story that explores the infinite pursuit of unconditional love and the search for genuine human connection in a world so obsessed with external validation.
Granted support: €192.500

Benjamin Bat (animation feature)

Script: Karen van Holst Pellekaan
Director: Patrick Raats
Dutch producer: Storytellers Film & TV
Co-producer: Zeilt Productions (LU)
Logline: The sensitive and musical Benjamin is being mocked by his bat family because he’s afraid of the dark. When on top of that he falls in love with a bird, the sworn enemy of bats, he becomes a complete outcast. But his love will help him conquer his fear and stand for who he truly is.
Granted support: €944.334

We are the River (documentary)

Script: Petr Lom, Corinne van Egeraat
Director: Petr Lom
Dutch producer: ZIN Documentaire
Co-producer: Ten Thousand Images (NO)
Logline: A Maori community leader makes a five-day canoe trip down New Zealand's Whanganui River with an Aboriginal elder and an Australian artist. The river was given personhood rights after 150 years of legal battle by the Maori, for recognition of their worldview. Can Indigenous knowledge save our planet?
Granted support: €73.400

High-end TV-series

Radio Care (documentary series)

Script: Nelleke Koop, Stephane Kaas
Director: Nelleke Koop, Stephane Kaas
Dutch producer: New Ams Film Company
Episodes: 6 x 45 minutes
Logline: To help people in Deventer find their way in the overburdened healthcare system, Ria hosts the local radio program Kanaal Sociaal (Care Radio). While her impassioned conversations and heartwarming songs can be heard in living rooms throughout the city, five individuals must change their lives in order to take good care of their loved ones.
Granted support: €311.377

Laura H (drama series)

Script: Matthijs Bockting, Pieter van den Berg
Director: Flynn von Kleist, Kadir Ferat Balci (BE)
Dutch producer Tomtit Film
Co-producer: Mockingbird Productions (BE)
Episodes: 5 x 50 en 1 x 60 minutes
Logline: How come the ordinary Laura from Zoetermeer the most famous Syrian in the Netherlands? Countless other girls have been in similar situations, but have not been tempted to travel to 'the promised land'. So why Laura?
Granted support: €768.481

Reimerswaal (drama series)

Script: Lone Scherfig
Adaptation: Kim van Kooten
Director: Joram Lürsen
Dutch producer: Lemming Film
Co-producer: FilmWave (VK)
Episodes: 8 x 42 minutes
Logline: Reimerswaal is a medical drama that takes place in the maternity ward of a large new hospital: a special, almost mysterious place, where many of us will spend the most crucial hours of our lives.
Granted support: €508.191

Spaceship Earth (documentary series)

Script: Teddy Cherim
Director: Teddy Cherim, Basha de Bruijn, Safi Graauw
Dutch producer: Totem Media
Episodes: 6 x 50 minutes
Logline: Spaceship Earth, a documentary series about the wondrous coherence between human-, animal- and plant life on this planet, as seen from both the Dutch earth’s surface as from outer space. The series aims to show a future in which humans can live in harmony with nature as a feasible reality rather than science fiction, thanks to technological innovations.
Granted support: €322.995

Images: Panda Bear in Africa, Casa di David, Benjamin Bat, We are the River, Radio Care, Spaceship Earth