Netherlands Production Platform - Nederlands Film Festival

Netherlands
Production
Platform
NPP Dossier 2008

Contents
Netherlands
Production
Platform 2008
2 Credits and acknowledgements
3 Foreword
Projects
4 The Bear (Romania)
6 Corps diplomatique (Switzerland)
8 The Fields (Belgium)
10 Invasion (Germany)
12 Istanbul (Hungary)
14 Lonely Woman (Belgium)
16 Our Grand Despair (Turkey)
18 Playoff (Israel)
20 The Runway (Ireland)
22 Seeing Chris (Ireland)
24 Shanghai-Belleville (France)
26 The Snow Queen (Estonia)
28 Svinalängorna (Sweden)
30 Um-Hussein (UK)
32 1-900 (Netherlands)
34 A Kronstadt Tale (Netherlands)
36 Lourdes (Netherlands)
38 Olga - Tomorow I’ll Dance (Netherlands)
40 Shocking Blue (Netherlands)
42 Sonny Boy (Netherlands)
44 Index
NPP 2008 • 1

The Netherlands Production Platform 2008 is supported by
MEDIA Programme of the European Union
Dutch Film Fund, HGIS-Cultuurmiddelen
Ministry of Education, Culture and Science
HGIS-Cultuurmiddelen
Erich Pommer Institut
Binger Filmlab
Kodak
Variety
Holland Film
MEDIA Desk Nederland
Screen International
NPO/RNW Sales
City of Utrecht
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EAVE
Bord Scannán na hEireann/Irish Film Board
Magyar Filmuniò
MDM Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung
Rotterdam Film Fund
Flanders Audiovisual Fund
Film Fund Luxembourg
Swedish Film Institute
Kodak NPP Development Prize
Jury:
Louis Machado . . . . . . .Country Manager/Kodak Cinema & Television
Marten Rabarts . . . . . . .Artistic Director, Binger Filmlab
Ria Jankie . . . . . . . . . . .Managing Director, Bowline BV
Jean Heijl . . . . . . . . . . .Managing Director, Moonlight Film Distribution
Eurydice Gysel . . . . . . .Producer, CCCP Film (Belgium)
With thanks to
Alan Fountain
Cinelink (Sarajevo Film Festival)
CoBo Fund, Janine Hage
Dominique van Ratingen
Esther Bannenberg
Fortissimo Films
Ger Bouma
Gerben Kuipers
Holland Subtitling, Wibo de Groot
Holland Harbour Productions
Ido Abram
Julie Bergeron
Kaisa Kriek
Marten Rabarts
NVF, Michael Lambrechtsen
NVS, Edwin Smelt
Nadja Radojevic
Stienette Bosklopper
Versteeg Wigman Sprey Advocaten, Roland Wigman
Waterland Film & TV
Head Holland Film Meeting
Ellis Driessen
Producer Holland Film Meeting
Marco Meijdam
Co-ordinator Digital Conference
Fred de Haas
Moderator
Nick Roddick
Round Tables and Individual Meetings
Maegene Fabias
Editing & design
Split Screen UK
Cover design
POOL
Printing
Drukkerij de Longte
Netherlands Film Festival
POBox 1581
3500 BN Utrecht
Netherlands
Te. (31) 30 2303800
Fax (31) 30 2303801
hfm@filmfestival.nl
www.filmfestival.nl
2 • NPP 2008
The information on the projects in this Dossier was supplied by the producers

Foreword
We are very pleased to welcome you to the Holland Film Meeting
2008 and, in particular, to the seventh edition of the Netherlands
Production Platform (NPP) in its present form.
The NPP Dossier 2008 contains descriptions and other vital
information supplied by the producers of the selected projects.
All other practical information about the Holland Film Meeting,
as well as information about guests, may be found in the HFM
Industry Guide.
The selection this year was not an easy process. We
received many projects we would have loved to introduce to both
the Dutch and the international film community. However, the
format of the NPP only allows the presentation of a limited
number of projects if we are to avoid an overloaded programme.
Continuing our policy of bringing together countries with a
high and low production capacity and combining the talent of
directors, writers and producers, we have selected 6 Dutch film
projects and 14 from Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany,
Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey
and the UK.
Every year, we carry out a survey among the participating
companies in order to improve the event. Based on this feedback,
we have now separated the presentations of the Dutch and
European projects. The 14 European projects will be discussed
on Friday morning, September 26; the Dutch projects on Saturday
morning, September 27. On Friday afternoon, a public session
should answer all our foreign guests’ questions with regard to
“What foreign producers should know about the Netherlands”.
The Dutch film industry will be given the opportunity to present
itself, and to discuss rules and regulations when it comes to coproducing.
That the NPP does indeed make things happen is proved by
the results of last year’s selection. To name but a few, Dutch
producers Circe Film and Isabella Films both received coproduction
monies for, respectively, Radu Jude’s The Happiest
Girl in the World (Hi Film Productions, Romania) and Hungarian
project Adrienn Pál by Ágnes Kocsis (Print KMH); Marleen Gorris’
My Father’s Notebook found a German co-producer; and Rotterdam-based
Another Film/De Productie signed with a sales agent
for Cold. A survey of the results from the previous years will be
available at the NPP.
The Holland Film Meeting also includes the Benelux
Screenings, showing new Dutch films with English subtitles in the
cinema, and the latest feature films and other audio-visual works
from the Benelux in the video library; the Binger-Screen International
Interview; and the Variety Cinema Militans lecture.
This year’s edition has been made possible with the support
of the Dutch Film Fund (HGIS-Cultuurmiddelen), the MEDIA
Programme of the European Union and the Ministry of Education,
Culture and Science. We also thank our new and established
partners as listed opposite, without whose generous support the
NPP 2008 would not have been possible.
Networking, establishing new contacts and finding partners
within the framework of the round-table sessions, the individual
meetings, the lunches and cocktails, form the basic elements of
the Platform. The staff of the Holland Film Meeting are ready to
provide assistance where and whenever needed!
Ellis Driessen
Holland Film Meeting
Doreen Boonekamp
Director, Netherlands Film Festival
NPP 2008 • 3

The Bear
(Ursul)
Libra Film
Romania
Writer/director Dan Chisu
Producer Tudor Giurgiu
4 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Late June 1990, Bucharest State Circus.
The general manager of the circus has been
replaced after the Romanian Revolution of
1989. The thirtysomething newcomer, Panduru,
a former participant in the revolution,
is determined to prove himself capable of
turning things round. Just a few days before
the premiere of the first post-Revolution
show, Panduru has to solve the circus’
biggest financial problem: the artists haven’t
been paid for months.
One day, the manager interrupts
rehearsals and calls a general meeting with
all the circus artists in the ring to share his
brilliant idea: Martin, the old, dying circus
bear, will be sold as a trophy for a German
amateur hunter who is willing to pay good
money to achieve his heart’s desire.
Instead of being taken in by the tempting
prospect of easy money, the artists decide
against sacrificing the bear, which has been
their companion for the last 20 years. As the
sale was a done deal long before he
announced it as an idea, this leaves Panduru
with no option but to steal the bear and
deliver it with the help of a professional
hunter and a wannabe gypsy gamekeeper.
When the circus people discover the disappearance
of the bear the following day,
they waste no time in following in the
thieves’ tracks, not even pausing to take off
their extravagant make-up and outfits.
From this moment on, the chase is
underway. The circus people split into three
groups, the better to track down the truck
with the stolen bear. Meanwhile, the gypsy
and the German hunter take a detour and
stop to party at the wedding of the gypsy’s
daughter. Panduru and the other man drive
to a hunting tower in the mountains - where
the bear is to give his final ‘performance’.
After a wild time at the wedding, the German
and the gypsy sing their way to the
hunting location where they encounter the
now free bear, mistake his friendly attempts
to come closer for an attack and run away,
the gypsy abandoning his bicycle.
Down the hill, they encounter the circus
people coming to the bear’s rescue and,
together with their other two partners in
crime, witness the most unlikely of scenes:
Martin the bear is now riding the bicycle
round the hunting tower. It is, after all, what
he had spent his entire life doing.
However, Martin’s freedom proves
short-lived: attracted by a familiar scent, the
bear goes back to the spot where another
German hunter, Wilhelm, is waiting for his
expensive hunting trophy. Bang, bang...
Director’s statement
This is a road movie, and also a film about
our honesty and sincerity - about that stage
in our lives, right after the Revolution of
December 1989, when we were unaware of
our true priorities, and were still ruled by
sentiment. Today, it would be a cheap
notion; back then, it was pure. All decisions
were dictated by the heart. This is a common
story about a common situation.
A man is politically appointed as the head
of an institution. He knows nothing of management
and attempts to solve problems to
the best of his ability: this was how he did it
during the Revolution. However, the institution
where he is appointed is the Bucharest
State Circus, which makes his entire story a
tragicomedy. Had he been appointed head of
a machine-building plant, in charge of selling
lathes, no one would have stood up to him.
But artists are different and live things differently
- which is why things slip out of control.
The circus employees are past their
prime; they have lived most of their adult
lives under the communist regime. Freedom
feels awkward to them, and the uncertainty
of tomorrow makes them regret the past.
However, at a time of crisis, they are willing
to give everything up without hesitating. Had
the same story happened today, who knows
how many would react like this
The comedy comes from their Fellini-like
outfits combined with their leftist newspeak
language. A meeting of the circus staff
resembles old party meetings, except the
participants are now clowns, acrobats and
magicians. Everything is comic. The comic
climax is when the bear rides a bicycle
around the hunting tower. But that is also the

Director
Dan Chisu
Producer
Tudor Giurgiu
Writer
Dan Chisu
Based on
an original story
Language
Romanian, German
Genre
Black comedy
Format
35mm
Running time
100 mins approx
Bucharest State Circus, 1990: after the
Romanian Revolution. The new young
manager is trying to solve the major
financial problems by selling its only
bear to German hunters.
Target audience
General
Budget
€ 752,250
Cast
tbc
saddest moment: the last knee-jerk reaction
of an animal torture-trained to amaze and
entertain us. It is, therefore, funny and sad at
the same time - just as it is sad that the circus
manager steals the bear so he can sell it
to the German hunter in exchange for his
employees’ wages. There is, in that, an innocence
that has got lost along the way. Nowadays,
if a manager were to steal, he would
steal for himself.
Visually, the camera is mobile most of
the time, following the colourful sight of the
three circus groups, first in the dull
Bucharest of the early 1990s, with its dirty
cars and grey buildings, then by contrast in
the Romanian villages and the green landscape
of early summer. That is why in the
first part the film seems black and white,
apart from the costumes of the circus group.
These are generously designed. Each of
the artists is dressed and made up for the
show. That is how they leave the ring, and
that is how they remain throughout the film.
Writer/director Dan Chisu
Studied at Ecole Supérieure Audiovisuelle,
Saint Denis. President of the DaKINO
Foundation since 1991 and founder of the
DaKINO International Film Festival (1991-
2003; 2005; 2006); also the Romanian
Advertising Festival (1994) and BiFEST
(2004). Co-producer of Beyond; Zapping and
The Firemen’s Chorus (two short films by
Cristian Mungiu); and The Famous Paparazzo
(feature, 1999). Currently working on
another film, Bang, you're dead/Web site
story and member of several film festival
juries.
Producer Tudor Giurgiu
Producer/director Tudor Giurgiu was born in
Cluj in 1972. He graduated from the
Bucharest Film Academy in 1995 and
worked as first assistant director to Lucian
Pintilie and Radu Mihaileanu.
Giurgiu is well-known for his music videos
and commercials, having worked with top ad
agencies and bands in Romania. In 2000, he
directed the documentary Hausmeister
(about the German community still living in
Transylvania). His short, Popcorn Story, was
selected for the 2002 Berlinale.
Giurgiu is founder and president of the
Transilvania International Film Festival, the
biggest in Romania, and founder of the production
company Libra Film and the film distribution
company Transilvania.
His feature directorial debut Love Sick
was selected for the Panorama section of
the 2006 Berlinale and was shown at more
than 30 international film festivals. It was
also the Romanian box-office hit of 2006.
From 2005-7, he served as general director
of Romanian National Television (TVR).
Current status
In development.
Aims at the NPP
Our objective is to set up an international
co-production. We believe that this story is
very different from all the recent Romanian
films which have won awards around the
world. It will be a different take on a subject
that hasn’t been explored nearly enough.
Contact
Tudor Giurgiu
Libra Film
Popa Soare Street 52
Bucharest 023984
Romania
Tel: (40) 21 326 6480
Fax: (40) 21 326 6480
tudor.giurgiu@librafilm.net
www.librafilm.net
NPP 2008 • 5

Corps
diplomatique
Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion
Switzerland
Writer/director Nadia Farès
Producer Samir
6 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Ismail Attia is a brilliant student who is completing
his degree at the prestigious Graduate
Institute for International Studies in Geneva. It
is the first time he has been separated from
his family; it is also his first stay in Europe.
Back in Cairo, he had already become
aware that he was more attracted to men,
but it is in Geneva that he first has one-night
stands. He never sees the same man twice
and never reveals his identity. And, when his
family arrives in Geneva, he doesn’t risk his
reputation any longer; instead, he assists his
father, Hussein, in a delicate mission.
But, at a diplomatic reception, Ismail falls
in love with the attractive and intelligent waiter,
Giuseppe. He starts to live a double life,
careful and clever, never arousing suspicion.
He uses his classmate, Aurelia, who is
madly in love with him, to cover up his secret
life. He even gives Aurelia an engagement
ring. Surprised but flattered, she accepts.
Ismail thinks that nobody will suspect the
true going-ons in his life. At the same time,
his father is on the receiving end of a lot of
criticism to do with the poor conditions of
women in his home country, and the fact that
homosexuals are imprisoned there. Ismail’s
brother, Mounir, who feels excluded from his
father’s attention, discovers Ismail’s secret.
He films his brother kissing Giuseppe.
Hussein is given the tape to watch.
Shocked, he refuses to acknowledge the
fact that his eldest son is gay and asks
Mounir to keep it a secret. Meanwhile, Ismail
feels more and more pressured by the double-life
that he is leading and tells Giuseppe
about his fake engagement to Aurelia.
Giuseppe is furious and they separate.
Ismail’s father invites him to spend the
evening with two call girls. His father wants
answers. But his ploy does not deliver the
desired results. He slowly understands that
he can’t change his son.
From that moment on, Hussein treats
Ismail like a dog. He locks him in his room
and confiscates his mobile, his keys and his
passport. Ismail realises he has to make a
decision: with the help of his sister and his
mother, he leaves his family behind…
Director’s statement
Corps diplomatique is inspired by a true
story. On September 25 2007, Mahmoud
Ahmedinejab declared, during a conference
in New York, that there were no homosexuals
in Iran. Said without irony, the statement
showed that, in Arab and Muslim cultures,
homosexuality is still completely denied.
Insults, mistreatment and imprisonments
are the usual response.
Ismail experiences similar treatment
within his own family. His battle for emancipation
is also a battle against a disgusting
hypocrisy. The diplomatic environment in
which the story takes place adds a touch of
irony to Ismail’s quest for emancipation and
the drama of deception and punishment.
Ironically, Hussein, the defender of human
rights in public, turns into an executioner in
private. Amid such contradictions, Ismail
has to make fundamental choices.
The cruelty of this intimate coming-out
story contrasts with the beauty of Geneva.
The story isn’t told in a militant way: an ideological
approach would have weakened the
tragedy. The script makes use of comedic
elements, which serve to enrich the human
relations - because above all else, it is a family
story with a universal theme.
Director Nadia Farès
Nadia Farès grew up in Switzerland. She
lived in Cairo and New York before moving to
Paris, where she currently lives and works.
While attending classes at the Tisch
New York University, she made her first
short films. Whilst still studying, Farès met
Kryzstof Kieslowski and started to work for
him as an assistant. She was supported by
him during the writing of the screenplay for
her short film Sugarblues, with which she
won the Stanley Thomas Johnson Prize.
After her Masters degree in Fine Arts at
New York University in 1996, she began
working on her first feature film, Miel et cendres
(Honey and Ashes), which enjoyed
great acclaim at numerous international festivals
and won several awards.
Parallel to her work for TV, Farès also

Director
Nadia Farès
Producer
Samir
Writer
Nadia Farès,
Yann-Olivier Wicht,
Yves Kopf
Based on
an original story
Language
Arabic, French, English
Genre
Family drama
Format
35mm
Running time
90 mins
Ismail Attia, son of an Egyptian diplomat, is
on the brink of a brilliant career in the
diplomatic service. What nobody knows
is that he is attracted to men. When Ismail
falls in love for the first time, his double life
starts to fall apart. He will have to make a
decision that will change his life forever.
teaches directing workshops and is currently
developing various scripts including
Secrets intimes, which will be produced by
Dschoint Ventschr.
Select filmography
1987 Semi-Sweet (short drama; 10 mins)
1988 1001 American Nights (short
melodrama; 14 mins)
Charlotte’s Empire (short comedy;
8 mins)
1991 Sugarblues (short drama; 30 mins)
1995 Lorsque mon heure viendra
(documentary; 55 mins)
1996 Miel et cendres (feature; 80 mins)
1999 Les saveurs du printemps
(short musical comedy; 25 mins)
2003 Anomalies passagères (feature;
90 mins)
2003-4 Faxculture (TSR/TV5;
cultural reportages)
2004-6 Mise au point (TSR/TV5;
series of short documentaries)
Production company Dschoint
Ventschr
Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion develops,
produces and markets films on cultural, political
and social issues. The company’s documentary
and feature films are concerned,
above all, with themes of cross-cultural
encounters, changing national identities, and
unconventional interpretations of history.
Dschoint Ventschr films take a critical,
dynamic and often humorous look at the contemporary
world. Its productions also make
innovative use of film language, searching for
new ways of seeing, and making use of the
new media and new technologies.
Since 1994, Dschoint Ventschr has produced
more than 60 documentaries and
feature films, mostly as international coproductions
with Germany, France, Austria,
the UK, Canada and others, as well as with
renowned television companies such as Arte,
3Sat, WDR, ZDF, SWR, RTBF, and of course
Swiss broadcasters SF, TSR and TSI.
Many of the company’s films have won
awards, including the feature films Fräulein
directed by Andrea Staka (Golden Leopard,
Locarno 2006); Snow White directed by
Samir; Nachbeben directed by Stina Werenfels;
Little Girl Blue directed by Anna Luif;
Strähl directed by Manuel Flurin Hendry; and
Miel et cendres directed by Nadia Farès.
In 1997, Samir and Schweizer received
the Zürich Film Prize for their outstanding
work as producers.
Current status
We are currently financing and expect to
have this complete by September 2008.
Jean-Luc Van Damme’s Banana Films
(Brussels) is currently attached as a partner.
Pre-production is planned for November-
December 2008, with shooting in January-
February 2009.
Of the budget, 65% comes from Switzerland,
10% from Belgium and 25% from France.
Aims at the NPP
We hope to strengthen our working relations
with European co-producers, sales agents
and distributors. For this project, we are still
looking for a third co-producer, a sales
agent and a distributor for Benelux.
Target audience
Arthouse, age 30-45
Budget
€1,700,000
Cast
Asser Yassin, Mahmoud
Hmeida, Sumaya Al
Khashaab, Assina Daoud,
Saïd Taghmaoui,
Roshdy Zem
Contact
Samir
Dschoint Ventschr
Zentralstrasse 156
8003 Zürich
Switzerland
Tel: (41) 44 456 30 20
Fax: (41) 44 356 30 25
samir@dschointventschr.ch
www.dschointventschr.ch
NPP 2008 • 7

The Fields
Savage Film
Belgium
Writer/director Michaël R Roskam
Producer Bart Van Langendonck
8 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
1985: 13-year old Jacky is a member of a
large cattle-breeding family in the south of
Limburg. Jacky spends his teenage years in
the countryside with his best friend, Alex,
son of the family’s vet.
Both boys’ fathers are worried about the
new European regulations on hormone use,
but the boys don’t care about this and spend
their time hanging around in the fields and
neighbouring villages. What they mostly chat
about is Jacky’s obsession with the unreachable
Lucia, daughter of the owner of a big
trucking company from a nearby village.
Lucia’s mentally unstable 16-year old
brother, Bruno, doesn’t make it any easier
for them. Then one day, while they’re out in
the fields, Jacky and Alex catch Bruno and
his friends in the act of masturbating - in the
presence of Lucia and her friend! Bruno
spots them and, going completely berserk,
smashes Jacky’s balls between two rocks.
Alex is powerless to intervene.
Afterwards, Bruno’s powerful father
manages to cover things up. Even Alex is
forced by his own father to remain silent,
since the latter is being blackmailed by
Bruno’s father.
A rift develops between the two families,
and the friendship between Jacky and Alex
comes to a sudden end: life will never be the
same again for either of them. 1985 ends with
the suicide of Alex’s father following his arrest
on suspicion of hormone-trafficking. Strangely
enough, Jacky’s family is unaffected.
20 years later: 33-year-old Jacky has
become a taciturn but violent man. Now a
cattle-breeder, he has become fascinated by
the effect of hormones on animals and has
begun experimenting on himself. In fact, he
has managed to reconstruct his manhood
through the use of a powerful cocktail of
testosterone. He has also taken his revenge
on Bruno, reducing him to a vegetative state.
Through his expertise and collaboration
with veterinarian Sam, Jacky manages to hold
his own in the hormone business. But Sam
wants more, aiming to make an exclusive deal
with powerful businessman and hormone
dealer De Kuyper. They set up a meeting.
Everything appears to go smoothly until
Alex suddenly appears as one of De Kuyper’s
associates. Jacky and Alex, both equally surprised,
are caught off-guard. But Alex turns
out to be working as part of an illegal undercover
police operation.
Once again, the two men are forced to
take a stand against one another, and memories
of the past are revived. In a rather clumsy
way, Jacky also involves Lucia in an effort
to free himself from his past - because she is
the only one he has ever loved as a ‘man’,
even though he was only 13 at the time.
Jacky and Alex confront the emotional
limits of loyalty and friendship. When the
police are about to arrest Jacky, Alex is once
again the silent witness, unable to help his
friend. This eventually leads to a final confrontation
between Alex and Jacky with
Lucia forced to be witness. For Jacky, the
only way out is an over-dose of testosterone,
going out in a blaze of ultraviolent glory.
Director’s statement
The Fields is a classic story, told in a nonchronological
way, about friendship and loyalty;
about destiny, powerlessness and
impotence; and about how sometimes character
and personality combined with certain
events in a man’s life can determine his destiny
before it has even started.
The story also hinges on conceptions
about the human condition: is man predestined
by birth, by his genetic design, or is he
the result of circumstances The story also
plays on contemporary events and specific
elements in Belgian society, starting with
the real-life scandals involving the hormone
and doping mafia.
This gives me the opportunity to tell a
story with a true background, set on real soil
in the area where I grew up myself, that is
nonetheless universal.
The premises are particular: a man, literally
without balls, is forced to substitute
his lost masculinity chemically with testosterone,
artificially creating courage and
strength. Then there is the encounter with a
‘forgotten’ childhood friend, now an undercover
cop. And finally, there is a woman

Director
Michaël R Roskam
Producer
Bart Van Langendonck
Writer
Michaël R Roskam
Based on
an original story
Language
Dutch (Flemish dialects)
and French (dialect)
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
120 mins
In the underworld of Belgium’s cattlehormone
mafia, an illegal dealer and an
undercover cop come face-to-face in a crime
investigation. But a dark and unsettling story
about loyalty and friendship unfolds through
their tormented past as childhood friends.
Target audience
Commercial arthouse
Budget
€ 2,200,000
Cast
Matthias Schoenarts,
Jeroen Perceval
who will be dragged along in their wake - a
symbol of hope, even an angel. Or is she…
The tone of the film is dark and tragic,
but at times also funny. Gradually, the story
unfolds and accelerates, with witty dialogue
and violence building up towards a final confrontation.
The action is set in the fields of
Flanders, which counteract the film’s
dynamic voice with mesmerising moments
of deep, uncanny silence.
Writer/Director Michaël R Roskam
As a (very) young man, Michaël R Roskam
was passionate about graphic novels,
comic-strips and cinema. Inspired by the
great Belgian tradition of comic-strip artists
like Hergé, he went to the St Lucas Academy
of Fine Arts in Brussels, where he discovered
painting and contemporary art. He
graduated, but also became involved in writing
fiction, while at the same time continuing
to draw and experimenting with video.
After jobs as a journalist and an advertising
copywriter, he wrote a script for a
short film, Haun. He finally found what he’d
been looking for: movement. Since then,
Roskam has worked as a film-maker.
His second short, Carlo (produced by
CCCP), won several prizes at festivals and
was shown on TV and in cinemas around
Europe. His third, The One Thing to Do, also
produced by CCCP, premiered in December
2005 at the Leuven International Short Film
Festival, where it won the Audience Award.
In November 2007, Roskam went to Los
Angeles to shoot Today Is Friday (produced
by Savage Film), a short based on an
Ernest Hemingway story.
Producer Bart Van Langendonck
After a career in music management and
programming, including 10 years as manager
for choreographer Wim Vandekeybus’s
internationally renowned dance company,
Ultima Vez, Bart Van Langendonck worked
at production company CCCP from September
2002 until September 2006, producing
features, shorts and documentaries.
He launched his own production company
in early 2007. Savage Film is a label of
Savage Productions, producing fiction and
documentary with directors such as Michaël
R Roskam, Fleur Boonman, Wim Vandekeybus,
Frank Theys and Bram Van Paesschen.
Current status
Development support has been secured
from the Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds and the
MEDIA Programme (Slate Funding 2007).
The following co-production partners are
attached: Eyeworks Film & TV (Belgium),
Waterland Film (Netherlands), Artémis (Belgium),
Sciapode (France), Kinepolis Film
Distribution (Belgium) and VTM (Belgium).
We are currently awaiting approval for
production support from the VAF (decision
due: October 8) and shooting is planned for
the summer of 2009 in the Flemish-speaking
and French-speaking areas of Belgium.
The total budget is €2.2 million, of which
€80,000 is currently in place.
Aims at the NPP
To meet Dutch distributors, Dutch broadcasters
and sales agents.
Contact
Bart Van Langendonck
Savage Film
Sans Soucisquare 2
1050 Brussels
Belgium
Tel: (32) 476 55 11 53
bart@savagefilm.be
www.savagefilm.be
NPP 2008 • 9

Invasion
Twenty Twenty Vision
Filmproduktion
Germany
Writer/director Dito Tsintsadze
Producer Thanassis Karathanos
Synopsis
Josef (50) stands at the graveside of his
wife, who committed suicide after their
young son died in an accident. After the
death of the two people closest to him, Josef
is a broken man. How is he supposed to go
on living in such terrible loneliness
Then Nina (45) and her son Mark (25)
come into his life; they introduce themselves
as distant relatives of his wife and
console him. Even though he can‘t remember
who they are, their friendliness is like
balm to his wounds.
After the ceremony, Josef invites them
to his villa at the edge of the forest and
shows them around. Their deep sympathy
and Mark’s friendliness bring warmth to
Josef’s frozen heart. They promise to meet
again - and the new-found relatives keep
their promise: Mark invites Josef to his
wedding to Julia, who is half Asian and is a
fascinating beauty.
One thing leads to another: the young
couple have nowhere to live and move in
with Josef for an indefinite period. Nina follows
them as a permanent guest and brings
along her friend, Daniel, who instantly
makes himself at home.
It also turns out that Julia has a 12-yearold
son, Pao, from a previous marriage.
Business associates of Daniel mysteriously
appear and make their own space in the
villa. The empty house slowly fills up with
life again.
Soon, Josef can no longer control things,
and Nina makes him obvious overtures -
which he rejects. But he feels irresistibly
attracted to Julia: an attraction which is passionately
reciprocated by Julia, despite
being married to Mark, of whom she seems
inexplicably afraid. Josef falls in love with
Julia and does everything to please her.
But feelings of love and friendship slowly
turn to violence. And the clearer Josef’s
feelings become towards Nina, Julia, Mark
and Daniel, who seem to control the house
by the games they play, the more he begins
to play his own game…
Director’s statement
Invasion is a bizarre thriller using elements of
dark comedy with unexpected twists and a
strong tension from beginning to end. It is similar
to films like Rear Window or The Shining,
in that almost everything happens in one place
and the suspense is sharp and concentrated.
Beautiful and terrible things happen right
on top of one another. In my opinion, the film
should have a high artistic and commercial
potential due to the tension which runs
through the whole of it. The audience will
remain in doubt right to the end – they will be
scared but also (I promise) will believe in
every detail of the main character’s metamorphosis
which leads to his ‘action’. While
everything appears to be normal, it is also
like a terrible nightmare.
Writer/director Dito Tsintsadze
Born in Tbilisi in 1957, Dito Tsintsadze is a
Georgian author and director who now lives
and works in Berlin. From 1975-81, he studied
directing under Eldar Schengelaya and
Otar Iosseliani at the Institute for Theatre
and Film in Tbilisi.
In 1990, he shot his first feature, Guests.
Following that, he worked for the production
company Schwidkaza and, in 1993, won the
Silver Leopard at Locarno and the Golden
Eagle at the Film Festival in Tbilisi for his
feature, On the Borderline, which was about
the civil war in Georgia.
From 1993-96, Tsintsadze worked for an
Italian production company. Then, in 1996,
he got a scholarship in Berlin and, with his
family, divided his time between Georgia
and Germany.
His film Lost Killers dealt with the experience
of five immigrants and their lives in the
red-light district of Mannheim; it won the Silver
Alexander at Thessaloniki. Gunshy
(2003) tells the story of a young man in love,
whose loss of a sense of reality leads to
murder (it won the Golden Seashell in San
Sebastian and the Golden Prometheus at
the Tbilisi International Film Festival).
10 • NPP 2008

Director
Dito Tsintsadze
Producer
Thanassis Karathanos
Writer
Dito Tsintsadze
Based on
an original story
Language
German
Genre
Thriller
Format
35mm
Running time
90 mins approx
Target audience
Ages 25-55
A film about the invasion of the house
and life of 50-year-old widower Josef.
But no one can decide who is the victim
and who is the offender.
Budget
+/- € 2,200,000
Cast
Joachim Król,
Katja Riemann,
Merab Ninidze,
Barnaby Metschurat
Dito Tsintsadze filmography
1988 The Drawn Circle/Dakhatuli tsre
(TV film; Grusia-Film)
1990 Guests/Stumrebi (short)
1992 Home/Sakhli (TV film;
Schwidkaza Film)
1993 On the Borderline/Zgvardze
(feature; Schwidkaza Film)
1999 Lost Killers (feature; Home Run
Pictures)
2002 An Erotic Tale (short; Ziegler Film)
2003 Schussangst/Gunshy (feature;
Tatfilm)
2006 Der Mann von der Botschaft
(feature; Tatfilm)
Reverse (TV film; Taia Group)
Producer Thanassis Karathanos
Thanassis Karathanos studied political and
social sciences in Athens. In 1998, he
founded Twenty Twenty Vision in Berlin
and, in 2003, together with Karl Baumgartner,
set up Pallas Film in Halle. He is a
member of the European Film Academy and
the German Film Academy.
Films include My Sweet Home; Hard
Goodbyes: My Father; Jagged Harmonies;
A Perfect Day; The Drummer; Restless; Fur;
Small Crime; Something Like Happiness;
Gucha – Distant Trumpet; Irina Palm; Tulpan;
Country Teacher and The World Is Big
and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner.
Production company
Twenty Twenty Vision
Twenty Twenty Vision is a film production
company based in Berlin. Principal Thanassis
Karathanos and shareholder Uta Ganschow
set the company up in December
1998 to produce feature films aimed at the
national and international markets.
The company makes films based
around strong characters and universal
storylines which deal with international
themes that reference common values and
explore the bridges between cultures in our
highly mediated world - dramas and comedies,
complex plots or simple stories told with
sincerity and irony that take us through the
next two decades toward 2020.
Productions include My Sweet Home,
Bunker, The Last Days, Hard Goodbyes: My
Father, Jagged Harmonies, A Perfect Day,
The Drummer, Restless, Fur, Small Crime
and A Day in the Country.
Current status
Final changes to the script will be made up
until the middle of August and we expect to
be in pre-production by September 2008.
Total budget +/- € 2,200,000
Finance in place Letter of intent from ZDF
Partners attached
None
Aims at the NPP
To find co-producers and financial partners.
Contact
Thanassis Karathanos
Twenty Twenty Vision
Filmproduktion GmbH
Schwedter Strasse 13
10119 Berlin
Germany
Tel: (49) 30 61 28 17 50
Fax: (49) 30 61 28 17 51
tkarathanos@
twentytwentyvision.eu
www.twentytwentyvision.eu
NPP 2008 • 11

Istanbul
Új Budapest Filmstúdió
Hungary
Writer/director Ferenc Török
Producer László Kántor
Synopsis
Katalin is 55 when János, her husband of 30
years, leaves her for a new girlfriend, a 28-
year-old student of his. Her crisis is received
with indifference by friends and family. Her
25-year-old daughter, Zsofi, is completely
preoccupied with her own pregnancy, and
her teenage son, Zoli, cares only about himself.
The people around her consider her
mentally ill and she is taken to hospital,
where she is sedated.
Katalin, however, escapes from the hospital
and, on the spur of the moment,
decides to take to the road, hitchhiking.
Receiving news of her disappearance, the
family is anxious to get things under control.
They take extreme measures, go to the
police, and finally force the unwilling Zoli to
bring home his mother who has been
tracked down to Istanbul.
In Istanbul, Katalin has met up with a
lonely Turkish worker, Hamil (52). The man
likes Katalin for what she is, and does not
see her as a middle-aged woman who has
been left by her husband. Zoli’s sudden
appearance comes as a shock and, in the
heat of the moment, Katalin refuses to
acknowledge her son.
Zoli confronts his mother and Hamil in a
restaurant. He begs her to fly back to
Budapest with him the next day. Katalin
finally gives in to her son’s wishes and
leaves Hamil.
Mother and son spend the night in Katalin’s
hotel room, while Hamil is wide-awake
next door. Here, Zoli finally understands that,
if he forces the family’s will on his mother, her
mental state could deteriorate for real.
The family waits for Zoli and Katalin at
the airport. They even take the newborn
baby with them for the new grandmother to
see. But Zoli walks out of customs alone:
Katalin has stayed in Istanbul.
Director’s statement
The story is an ordinary one: a 55-year-old
woman’s husband leaves her after 30 years
of marriage. It is, however, a very personal
one, based on my mother’s crisis after her
separation from my father.
The storyline does not concentrate solely
on the personal drama of the main character.
Her family and background are a
decisive presence throughout. The dynamics
of the special emotional relationships
between the story’s various characters and
their day-to-day problems, lies and love
conflicts, provides the dramatic weave of
this story of parallels.
The visual atmosphere is defined by simplicity.
The camera remains in the background
throughout, like a fly on the wall,
allowing precise storytelling and empathetic
acting to remain the point of focus.
The most important questions the movie
raises are: Can an individual make independent
decisions despite family ties And
does anyone have the right to follow their
ego at the expense of others
12 • NPP 2008

Director
Ferenc Török
Producer
László Kántor
Writer
Ferenc Török
Based on
an original story
Language
Hungarian
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
90 mins
Today, at kindergarten, half the fathers are
over 50, bringing children from their second
marriage. But where are their first wives
Target audience
The film tells a compelling and
universal story and should
attract a reasonably large
adult audience
Budget
€ 1,400,400
Cast
tbc
Writer/director Ferenc Török
2001 Holiday Home (documentary;
55 mins; Beta; director)
2002 A Bus Came - Shoes (short; 17 mins,
35mm; director and script;
Hungarian Film Festival: Collective
Creating Award)
2004 Eastern Sugar (Szezon; feature;
90 mins; 35mm; director and script;
Hungarian Film Festival: Award of
the Public, Best Supporting Actor;
Antwerp Festival van de Sociale
Film: Best Director. Shown at
Locarno, Cottbus, Seville,
Rotterdam, Belgrade, Moscow,
Barcelona, Palic, Singapore,
Taipei, Valencia, La Rochelle)
2005 Wonderful Wild Animals (Csodálato
vadállatok; TV film; 53 mins; Beta)
2007 Overnight (feature; 91 mins; 35mm)
Current status
Pre-production. Alexander Ris (Mediopolis,
Germany), Petra Goedings (Phantavision,
Netherlands) and Ali Özgentürk (Asya Film,
Turkey) are on board as co-producers. The
shoot is expected to take five weeks, starting
in February 2009.
Aims at the NPP
Looking for producers from Western Europe
to finalise the co-production.
Production company
Új Budapest Filmstudió
Új Budapest Filmstudió was founded in
2001. The company has produced several
co-productions, mostly with European countries.
Its main activity is feature, documentary
and short films, and its aim is to create
a bridge between the Balkans and the West.
Our films have been selected for major
film festivals including Berlin, Montreal,
Tokyo, Karlovy Vary, Chicago, Locarno and
Sarajevo. Features include The Trap
(2007), directed by Srdan Golubovic; and
Tableau (2008), directed by Gábor Dettre.
Contact
László Kántor
Új Budapest Filmstudió
1023 Budapest
Török u 1
Hungary
Tel: (36) 1 316 0943
Fax: (36) 1 336 1009
ujbpfilm@ujbudapestfilmstudio.hu
www.ujbudapestfilmstudio.hu
NPP 2008 • 13

Lonely Woman
Artémis Productions
Belgium
Writer/director Stefan Liberski
Producer Patrick Quinet
14 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
On occasion, Martin Laumann has to go to
Japan to meet a client. One day, his wife
Elsa decides not only to go with him but to
precede him and travel on her own for a
couple of weeks. Martin encourages her to
do it but, when he arrives at the hotel in
Osaka, Elsa is nowhere to be found.
As the film opens, Elsa is living out her
newfound solitude. She experiences her
self, alone, through being an alien. One
night, she sees an outrageous truck,
bristling with metal spikes and blinking with
multicoloured lights. It is a Dekotora (Dekotoras
are customised trucks found in Japan.
Their drivers and owners are members of
brotherhoods that organise meetings and
contests.) Seeing that truck, poised like a
UFO, Elsa is intrigued, as if she were being
lured to travel into another dimension.
She meets Eiji, a Belgian-Japanese
video artist. They become friends. Elsa’s
interest in Dekotoras piques Eiji’s curiosity.
He suggests making a video about travelling
across Japan in a Dekotora. With Eiji, Elsa
discovers an unusual facet of Japan and the
still vivid remnants of a bygone past. She is
attracted to the young man.
At this point, we go through sequences
of lives dreamed up by Elsa: she is a housewife,
with an ordinary husband and a kid in
a school uniform. Then she is working on
the assembly line in a Tokyo chocolate factory,
alongside a team of white-clad women.
Then she is sitting in her tiny apartment…
These visions of a ‘Japanese Elsa’ interweave
with scenes depicting the consequences
of her absence from Europe,
where Martin has contacted a private detective
to find his wife.
Elsa, Eiji and Naoki (the Dekotora truck
driver whom Eiji has hired) are riding in the
Dekotora, with Eiji taping. On the outskirts of
Fukuchiyama, Elsa and Eiji attend a big
Dekotora meet. The huge gathering, the
thunderous noise, the bizarre procession of
garish trucks, the hordes of video cam-toting
spectators all end up disgusting Elsa.
She loses interest in the project.
That night, a traumatic, long forgotten
memory comes back to her in a dream. In
the ryokan where they are staying, Elsa and
Eiji make love. Very early the next morning,
she goes for a walk and sees a woman waving
her kids goodbye as they go off to
school. Elsa waves back at her. The woman
looks at her for a moment, then waves at her
too, as if they were complicit.
Back at the ryokan, Elsa packs up her
things and walks out, leaving a note for Eiji,
and takes a bus to Osaka. She has decided
to go home. She finds herself in a mountain
village where one of those ancient celebrations
of the equinox is taking place. Elsa
wanders by herself in the dark and incomprehensible
limbo of this forsaken village.
Suddenly, a man yells out her name. It is
Martin. She smiles at him and takes his
wrists in her hands. “Yes,” she says.
On the bus, Elsa wakes up. Through the
window, she sees a red sun rising over the
Japanese countryside. The detective’s
rental car stops in front of a police station.
They hesitate. Eiji makes to get out. The
detective stops him and starts the car.
Director’s statement
In its broken-up structure, Lonely Woman
mixes present (and real-life) sequences on
Elsa’s trip with imaginary ones from her fantasised,
‘new’ life.
The contents of the scenes of this
dreamed future are divided into two moods:
the first one has to do with Elsa’s desire, the
other her guilt. On the one hand, there is the
desire for Japan; on the other, guilt about the
people (and the world) she has left behind.
Elsa wants to be alone to face otherness.
She plunges into Japanese foreignness
in the hope of encountering herself. As
always, this means finding the distance, the
divide and a new relationship between the
self and others (or the Other).
I would like to film Lonely Woman on HD
video with a small crew so that I can also
capture everyday life in Japan. In that country,
daily life has its own unique shape and
abundant extravagance in ordinary things
that I would like to include in the film’s
atmosphere and aesthetics.

Director
Stefan Liberski
Producer
Patrick Quinet
Writer
Stefan Liberski
Based on
an original story
Language
French, Japanese
Genre
Drama
Format
HD, transferred to 35mm
Running time
90 mins approx
Target audience
Ages 18-70
Travelling across Japan, a young woman
discovers another culture and finds herself
again. But, instead of starting a new life in a
new land, she returns home forever changed.
Budget
€ 1,215,578
Cast
tbc
Writer/director Stefan Liberski
1951 Born in Brussels.
1979 Assistant to Federico Fellini on La
città delle donne.
1985 Publishes first book, Beau fixe.
1989 Creates Les Snuls with Frédéric Jannin
and a new programme for Canal+ Belgium,
J’aime autant de t’ouvrir les yeux.
1996 Publishes G.S., Écrivain tout simplement
(Albin Michel). Works as writer for
comic strip Les aventures de Petit Jules et
Pépé Jules.
1998 Makes a series of medium-length fiction
films for Canal+ with various Belgian
comedians. Also cartoon series Froud et
Stouf with Frédéric Jannin.
2000 Welcome in New Belgique: The
Kanne Festival of Belgium, or 2000 years of
Belgian Cinema. Publishes Des tonnes
d’amour (Editions Niffle-Cohen)
2004-5Directs Twin Fliks for Belgian TV (with
Frédéric Jannin) and publishes Les Béatitudes
de Ravi Pangloss (Editions QUE).
2005 Directs Bunker Paradise, feature film.
2006 Writes Le break, feature for Artémis
Productions. Directs La beauté de l’ordinaire
(3x15 mins, video HD) for the Belgian
stand at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Producer Patrick Quinet
Patrick Quinet studied film direction at
INSAS (1987-1991). After working as production
assistant, director of production and
first assistant director (notably for Chantal
Ackerman), Quinet founded Artémis Productions.
The company has produced a
number of short features and documentaries,
12 Belgian feature films and has
additionally co-produced 31 foreign feature
films and eight TV films.
Since 2001, Quinet has been the president
of the UPFF (the Union of Francophone
Film Producers), working closely with the
Belgian Minister of Finance for the creation
of a Belgian tax shelter.
In March 2003, Quinet created the
French production company Liaison Cinématographique,
which acts as the main
French partner for all Artémis projects.
Artémis regularly works with other partners
such as Samsa Film in Luxembourg,
Nord-Ouest Productions in France and with
Cinéart in Brussels for Belgian distribution,
as well as with all major French and international
distribution companies (TF1 International,
Wild Bunch, MK2 and Pyramide).
Current status
The project is currently financing. By September,
we expect to have an agreement with a
Japanese production company and for the
director to have travelled in Japan for auditions,
script re-writing, and location scouting.
€350,000 is already in place from the
Communauté française de Belgique and an
application to the CNC is in progress. Liaison
Cinématographique (France) is already
attached as a partner and negotiations are
ongoing with Gauguins International to act as
line producer and/or co-producer in Japan.
Aims at the NPP
Looking for distributor, sales agent, finance
and/or other interested parties.
Contact
Patrick Quinet
Artémis Productions
60 rue Gallait
1030 Brussels
Belgium
Tel: (32) 2 216 23 24
Fax: (32) 2 216 20 13
Mobile: (32) 473 679 976
sylvie@artemisproductions.com
www.artemisproductions.com
NPP 2008 • 15

Our Grand
Despair
(Bizim büyük caresizligimiz)
Bulut Film
Turkey
Director Seyfi Teoman
Producer Nadir Operli
16 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Ender and Çetin are two middle-aged men
who have been close friends since high
school. Çetin returns to Ankara, having left to
study and work many years before. The two
realise their youthful dream and Çetin moves
in with Ender, who has never left Ankara.
While on holiday in Turkey to visit his
family, Fikret, their close friend from high
school who lives in the US, has a car accident
with his parents. They are killed and
Fikret is injured. He has to return to the US
so he asks whether his sister, Nihal, can
stay with Ender and Çetin until she finishes
her university degree in two years time.
At first, Ender and Çetin are annoyed by
the presence of a third party just when their
dream of living together has come true. Nihal
cannot get over the trauma of losing her parents
and she does not want to communicate
with them. After a while, however, they begin
to get used to each other: sharing the same
house draws the three closer and they soon
enjoy spending time together.
While Nihal establishes an intellectual
relationship with Ender, who works as a translator
at home during the day, she builds a
more everyday relationship with Çetin, who is
an engineer. The inevitable happens: Ender
and Çetin, who seem to be caring, protective
and calm, and who act like Nihal’s parents in
an effort to release her from the troubles she
has gone through, fall in love with her, each
unaware of the other’s feelings.
This gives them both the chance to look
back on their lives, the intimate friendship
between them, the myth of their common
past, the lost years of their youth, the
women in their lives, their dreams and
expectations about old age - in fact, to
assess almost everything…
At the end of the first year, Nihal goes to
the US to visit Fikret for the summer vacation.
Ender and Çetin take a trip together
and confess their love for Nihal to each
other. When Nihal returns at the end of summer,
they put a certain distance between
them and her because of their guilty consciences.
They adopt a paternal attitude to
avoid intimacy.
Meanwhile, Nihal meets a boyfriend at
university. She starts to spend time with him
and does not come home for a while. Then
she gets pregnant. After she arranges an
abortion with the help of Ender and Çetin, her
boyfriend leaves her. In spite of all this, Nihal
manages to graduate and moves to the US to
live with her brother. Ender and Çetin are
finally alone, facing old age in Ankara.
Director Seyfi Teoman
Seyfi Teoman was born in Kayseri, Turkey,
in 1977. After studying economics at
Bogazici University in Istanbul, he lived in
Lodz, Poland, for two years, studying directing
at the Polish National Film School.
He made a short film, Apartment, in
2004, which was screened at several international
film festivals. He directed his first
feature, Summer Book, in September 2007.

Director
Seyfi Teoman
Producer
Nadir Operli
Writer
Baris Bicakci,
Seyfi Teoman
Based on
Bizim Büyük Caresizligimiz
by Baris Bicakci
Language
Turkish
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
110 mins
The story of two middle-aged men and a
young woman. A peculiar blend of melancholy,
the sorrows of impossible love and the
serenity of infinite friendship.
Target Audience
International festival circuit;
people who like characterdriven,
emotionally engaging,
moody and complicated love
stories.
Budget
€ 425.250
Production company Bulut Film
Founded in 2006 by Yamaç Okur and Nadir
Öperli, Bulut Film is a production company
that aims to produce films with directors’
labels. As such Bulut Film is interested in
auteur works of fresh talents. Bulut Film’s
main vision is to produce first films of young
and talented directors who are eager to
have a word in international cinema scene.
Furthermore Bulut Film aims to produce or
co-produce the prospective projects of internationally
acclaimed Turkish directors most
of whom produce their own films due to the
lack of creative producers in Turkey.
Films:
Completed:
Tatil Kitabi (Summer Book) Dir.: Seyfi Teoman,
2007, 35mm, 92 min. (completed)
In Production:
Kara Bulut (Black Cloud) Dir.: Theron Patterson,
principal shooting completed at September
2008.
In Pre-Production:
Bizim Buyuk Caresizligimiz (Our Grand
Despair) Dir.: Seyfi Teoman
Planned principal shooting for Winter and
Spring 2009
Cinnet (Frenzy) Dir.: Emin Alper
script to be completed in November 2008
Korfez (Gulf) Dir.: Deniz Buga
script to be completed in February 2009
Current status
Pre-production. Our Grand Despair had
script and project support from the Hubert
Bals Fund (March 2008 session) and the
director received $30,000 from Turkish beer
company Efes Pilsen for the Istanbul Film
Festival FIPRESCI Onat Kutlar Award (won
by Summer Book), to be used for his next
project.
Total budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$750,000
Bulut Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$100,000
Hubert Bals Fund . . . . . . . . . . . . .$20,000
Efes Pilsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$30,000
Töre Karahan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$50,000
Finance in place . . . . . . . . . . . . .$200,000
Aims at the NPP
To find co-producers.
Cast
Ilker Aksum (Çetin),
Muhammet Uzuner (Ender),
Asli Enver (Nihal),
Taner Birsel (Murat),
Mehmet Ali Nuroglu (Bora)
Contact
Nadir Operli
Bulut Film
Bogazici Universitesi
Mithat Alam Film Merkezi
Guney Kampus
Bebek
Istanbul
Turkey
Tel: (90) 212 287 19 49
Fax: (90) 212 287 70 68
info@bulutfilm.com
www.bulutfilm.com
NPP 2008 • 17

Playoff
Topia Communications
Israel
Director Eran Riklis
Producer Michael Sharfshtein
18 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
It is the 1970s, 30 years after the war: a time
before satellites and the internet; a moment
before the world became a global village. It
runs by definitions, first according to national
symbols which draw clear lines between
countries, then between outlooks and
beliefs, between friend and foe. There is
East and West; Israel and Germany; good
and bad - and between them there is an
abyss that cannot be bridged.
Coming from a family of Holocaust survivors,
the archetype of determination and
struggle, Max (45) has achieved the impossible.
With determination, he has gone from
being a bullied refugee child to the ultimate
Israeli: the successful and popular coach of
Maccabi Tel-Aviv, the basketball team that
has become a national symbol and has
taken Europe by storm. His success and
outward complacency mask the fact that he
feels dislocated from the world, unable to
enjoy the fruits of his hard work.
Everybody believes that Max, with his
family history, will reject the astonishing offer
he receives after winning the European
Championship with Maccabi: to coach the
German national team. However, despite the
public outrage in Israel and despite his mother
regarding the step as an act of betrayal, he
agrees to go to Germany for a trial period.
Perhaps deep down he believes that he will
not take the job and be back in no time.
Once in Germany, however, he is irresistibly
drawn to the apartment where he
lived as a child. There he finds himself
attracted to Deniz, a young Turkish woman,
lost in a new life in a new country. While helping
Deniz find her husband, Max digs into his
own past and discovers new facts about old
family secrets, mostly do to with his father.
He realises that his whole life has been
based on betrayal and desires - nothing heroic,
nothing symbolic. Max slowly understands
that he has to smash the symbols of the past,
and that the first symbol is his own.
And so he becomes the coach of the
German team, facing the past, perhaps
understanding it better, and becoming a
new symbol of his own personal victory.
Director’s statement
After The Syrian Bride and Lemon Tree,
which (with Cup Final) completed my Middle
East trilogy, I thought it was about time to put
my mind and soul into other stories. So no
more Israelis and Palestinians, not even the
Druze… but in all honesty, am I really going
to move that far away from the explosive stories
of the Middle East Well, not really…
Playoff is set in Germany almost 30
years ago. It is about being a stranger in a
familiar land, about looking at your past in
order to understand your future. It is about
taking risks, exploring new frontiers, crossing
borders (a subject I am quite familiar
with), dealing with your demons and moving
ahead. It is about personal and national preconceptions,
icons, symbols…
Our story puts all these elements to the test
by using the very personal story of one man,
and then one woman, and a group of basketball
players. So we will combine sports, immigration,
solitude and searching: the constant
search for people, love, friendship, power,
understanding – all words that I feel make for
a powerful foundation for a powerful story.
If I had to match two films which could be
a recent inspiration for Playoff, I would, as
directors like to say, describe it as a cross
between Head-On and The Lives of Others, a
cross which is an intriguing one as it is a
fusion of different styles in terms of storytelling
and visual conception. And I feel Playoff can
mix the two to create its own exciting style.
Director Eran Riklis
Eran Riklis is one of Israel’s most acclaimed
film-makers. His most recent film as writer,
director and producer is Lemon Tree, coproduced
with Germany and France and
winner of the audience award at the 2008
Berlin Film Festival.
Riklis’s previous film, The Syrian Bride,
enjoyed worldwide critical and box-office
success and won 16 international awards,
including Best Film in Montreal and Audience
Favorite in Locarno.
Previous feature films by Riklis include:
the award-winning Cup Final (1992, present-

Director
Eran Riklis
Producer
Michael Sharfshtein
Writer
Gidon Maron, David Akerman
Based on
an original story inspired by
true events
Language
English, German, Hebrew
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
100 mins
Target audience
Wide
Thirty years after surviving the Holocaust, a
famous Israeli basketball coach goes back to
Germany to coach the national team.
Budget
€ 5,000,000
Cast
tbc
ed in Venice and at the Berlinale); Zohar
(1993, the biggest box-office success of the
1990s in Israel); Temptation (2002); Vulcan
Junction (2000); and his first film, On a Clear
Day You Can See Damascus (1984).
Producer Michael Sharfshtein
One of the most successful producers in
Israel, Michael Sharfshtein has been working
in film and television for almost 40
years. Today his production company,
Topia Communications, is part of the United
King Films group.
United King Films is one of the biggest
distribution and production companies in
Israel, responsible for many of the major film
and television productions in recent years
and also the owner of the biggest cinema
complex in Israel.
The company’s films include Women
(Moshe Mizrahi, 1998); Passover Fever
(Shemi Zarhin, 1997); and two films by Eran
Riklis: Zohar and Cup Final.
Writer Gidon Maron
Gidon Maron worked as a crime reporter for
Ma’ariv, the second-largest daily newspaper
in Israel, for seven years. He also wrote
a book about the ‘Motorcycle Robber’, a
case which drove the Israeli police crazy
and fascinated the public.
Maron created the TV series Criminal
Reports (2005), based on real events and stories
he covered as a crime reporter. He currently
writes for Yediot Aharonot magazine.
He is a graduate of the Bar Ilan University
in Criminology and Political Science.
Writer David Akerman
2004-5 Love Behind the Corner (drama
series, produced by Hertzlia
Studios & Channel 2)
2005 The Criminal Reporter (drama
series, produced for Israeli
Television, Channel 1)
Eengale (52-minute drama,
produced for Channel 2)
Vaserman/The Rain Man (52-
minute drama; Channel 2 France/
Channel 2 Israel; Best Drama,
International Film Festival, Gerona)
2006 Srak-Srak (feature film, co–produc
tion between Israel and Spain)
2006 Bad Girls (drama series,
produced for the Music Channel)
Current projects:
48.7 Inches (feature film, Israel/Australia
co-production)
Wild Horses (drama series, produced by
Omer TV for Israeli Television, Channel 10)
Casino Proletariat (feature film, Israel/
France co-production)
Current status
Third draft currently available; casting in
progress; co-production and world sales
negotiations being held. By September
2008, we expect to be closing German and
French co-producers and world sales.
Aims at the NPP
To explore Dutch co-production possibilities,
together with further European and/or
other co-production options.
Contact
Eran Riklis
10 Melchet Street
65215 Tel Aviv
Israel
Tel: (972) 3 620 6385
Fax: (972) 3 525 5437
Mobile: (972) 52 2442130
eriklis@netvision.net.il
NPP 2008 • 19

The Runway
Fastnet Films
Ireland
Writer/director Ian Power
Producer Macdara Kelleher
Synopsis
Early 1980’s Ireland. Nine-year-old Paco
believes his absent father is a NASA astronaut
so he and his traveller friend, Frogs,
build a transmitter like the one in E.T.
One night, Paco is amazed to see something
crash in the fields near his house.
There he finds not an alien, but a Colombian
pilot named Ernesto. The wings have been
shorn off his plane and the boys believe it’s
a rocket. The media soon descends on the
town and, when local inventor Sutherland
suggests they repair the plane, publicitysavvy
Mayor Carr sees this as an opportunity
to rejuvenate his town, which was once
the Aluminium Capital of Ireland.
After finding the precious wings largely
undamaged, everyone pitches in – as do
some IRA men, who supply aviation fuel
when they are told Ernesto is Che Guevara’s
cousin. But before Ernesto can fly
away, he is arrested on the say-so of his
drug-smuggling boss, Francisco, who has
arrived and is posing as a Colombian cop.
Ernesto confesses that he is indeed a
criminal and that he stole World Cup souvenirs
to sell, but the locals have been won
over by him - Paco’s mum, Grace, has even
fallen for him - so he is busted out of jail.
To huge cheers, Ernesto takes off down
a rough tarmac runway laid by the townspeople.
Later, Paco finds bundles of dollar
bills hidden in the cigar box that Ernesto has
left behind.
Director’s statement
My intention has always been to tell a personal
story that would connect with people
in a universal way. And, while I knew this
would probably end up being called a family
film, I never wanted the film to feel compromised
for the sake of its audience. I wanted
to write a film where the escapism was
derived from real situations and told from a
child’s point of view, so that those situations
could be interpreted in a fantastic, exciting
and valid way.
Writer/director Ian Power
Ian has been directing commercials since
2001. He has won numerous awards for his
work in this field, including an ICAD Award
for Best Direction. He was also featured in
Shots magazine.
In 2003, Ian received an RTE/Irish Film
Board Short Cut Award to make his short
film, The Wonderful Story of Kelvin Kind,
which was completed in mid 2004 and was
picked up by Warner Bros for a nationwide
release with the Keanu Reeves feature
Constantine. In April 2005, the film won the
Jury Bronze Torc for Best Short Drama at
the Celtic Film & Television Festival.
In 2005, Ian was selected for the
Moonstone Filmmakers Lab for his project
Daydream Believer, and took part in
January 2006.
20 • NPP 2008

Director
Ian Power
Producer
Macdara Kelleher
Writer
Ian Power
Based on
an original story based on true
events
Language
English
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
105 mins approx
The Runway is inspired by the true story of a
South American pilot who crashed his plane in
a field near Mallow in Ireland in 1983. Against
all the odds, the people of the town came
together to build a runway to get him home,
and briefly catch the imagination of the nation.
Target audience
Family
Budget
€ 2,400,000
Cast
Demian Bichir
Production company Fastnet Films
Established in 1983, Fastnet Films is a
leading Dublin-based film production company,
creating Irish and internationally coproduced
feature films for domestic and
foreign release.
Fastnet has produced and co-produced
feature films, television drama series and
documentaries with cumulative budgets of
over €50 million.
Fastnet’s most recent film, Lance
Daly’s Kisses, has been selected by the
Toronto, Telluride and Locarno film festivals,
and is being sold by Focus Features
and CAA.
Current status
To date, €50,000 has been received for
development from the Irish Film Board, with
an as-yet unquantified commitment to production
finance. The estimated budget is
€2.4 million, 60% of which is in place.
Mexican actor Demian Bichir is in place
to play Ernesto, and casting director Nick
McGinley is also attached.
Aims at the NPP
Completing finance and networking with
potential co-producers.
Contact
Macdara Kelleher
Fastnet Films
First Floor
75-76 Lower Camden Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
Tel: (353) 1 478 9566
Mobile: (353) 87 935 0483
Fax: (353) 1 478 9567
macdara@fastnetfilms.com
www.fastnetfilms.com
NPP 2008 • 21

Seeing Chris
Newgrange Pictures
Ireland
Writer/director Tom Cairns
Producer Jackie Larkin
22 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Seeing Chris is a coming-of-age story about
a young girl wavering on the frontier
between adolescence and womanhood and
fearful of losing her sight, who experiences
the shock of intimacy when she becomes
infatuated with an older man.
Suburban teenager Laurel feels uncertain
of her attractiveness or her place in her
family. Younger sister Penelope is ‘the pretty
one’, training to be a dancer, and brother
Paul is still a little kid. Laurel is embarrassed
by her urbane father, although her more
confident friend Maureen thinks he’s terribly
attractive; and she feels disconnected from
her well-groomed, dispassionate mother.
Laurel is pale, shy and eager for love -
and may be losing her sight. She first sees
Chris after a consultation with ophthalmologist
Dr Wald in Manhattan. He is sitting at
the bar in Jakes, opposite Dr Wald’s consulting
rooms, with two friends. Laurel
stares at him, noticing his shiny hair. He
smiles at her in the mirror.
When Maureen tells Laurel she’s sleeping
with Kevin, Laurel confides her interest
in Chris. After her monthly check-ups with
Dr Wald, she goes into Jakes hoping to see
him. She is nervous and excited by his presence,
his touch on her wrist. He is 27, aware
of her youth; his friends talk about things
she doesn’t understand.
Her vision becomes worse. Upset by
other patients with unseeing and bandaged
eyes, she stumbles into Jakes. Chris comforts
her and makes her laugh before hurrying
out. She feels she is special to him, too.
Laurel sees Chris the last Thursday of
each month. Her schoolwork deteriorates, as
does her relationship with her parents. Chris
tells her it is a pity he can’t see her more
often, but he doesn’t react when she kisses
him. Laurel is confused. When Dougie, a boy
she had a crush on in eighth grade, kisses
her at a party, she feels nothing.
She tries to talk to Maureen about Chris,
but she’s making out with Kevin. When Laurel
makes a special trip to see Chris, he
arrives late and barely speaks to her. Laurel
feels she has done something wrong but
doesn’t know what. But the following Thursday
he calls her ‘honey’. They make a date
for Friday evening and Laurel tells her parents
she is staying with Maureen.
The date doesn’t go as expected. They
are never alone, hardly talk. Back in his
apartment, she feels jittery and sick. He
asks her why she came. She realises whatever
it was she had been waiting for has
gone. They remain at cross-purposes all
night and, at dawn, she says she has to go.
He drops her off at the station. Numbed by
disappointment, she discards her virginity to
Dougie the next week in a meaningless few
minutes at Maureen’s house.
The next month, Dr Wald assures her
she isn’t going blind. There is no sign of
Chris at Jakes: no one has seen him for a
while. She realises that maybe she hurt him.
First love and loss jolt her out of the daydreams
of childhood into adulthood.
Writer/director Tom Cairns
Tom is a highly sought-after film and theatre
director in the UK. In the past year, he has
directed Aristocrats by Brian Friel, All About
My Mother by Pedro Almodóvar for the
National Theatre, and the world premiere of
The Tempest at The Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden.
For his first feature film, he collaborated
with Wallace Shawn on a screen adaptation
of Marie and Bruce, starring Julianne Moore
and Matthew Broderick. He also directed the
BAFTA-nominated drama series Amongst
Women, from the novel by John McGahern.

Director
Tom Cairns
Producer
Jackie Larkin
Writer
Tom Cairns
Based on
the short story ‘What it was
like seeing Chris’ by
Deborah Eisenberg
Language
English
Genre
Teen drama
Format
35mm
Running time
100 mins
Wavering on the frontier between
adolescence and womanhood, she
experiences intimacy for the first time
when she falls in love with Chris, a man
10 years older than her and from
the wrong side of the tracks.
Target audience
18-plus
Budget
€ 2,500,000
Cast
tbc
Production company
Newgrange Pictures
Newgrange Pictures was established in
Dublin, Ireland, in April 2005, bringing
together a unique form of proven experience
in production, finance and distribution.
The company is run by producers Jackie
Larkin and Lesley McKimm, and its board
consists of a diverse mix of media experts,
including financier Domhnal Slattery and
distributor Paul Higgins. Newgrange
received company slate funding from the
Irish Film Board in 2007 and is currently
developing a slate of feature films for the
international market.
Jackie Larkin produced Newgrange’s
debut feature Kings, which was the first ever
Irish film to be to be selected for the Foreign
Language category of the Oscars and has
since gone on to win numerous awards.
The company is now in production with
its second feature film, the wedding comedy
Happy Ever Afters, starring Sally Hawkins.
Current status
Seeing Chris has been in development for
over a year now and we are currently in the
process of writing the second draft. The project
is being developed with the assistance
of the Irish Film Board.
Director Tom Cairns will collaborate with
acclaimed author Deborah Eisenberg in
adapting Seeing Chris for the screen. The
film will be shot in New York. Our aim is to
go into production in Autumn 2009.
Aims at the NPP
Apart from our collaboration with the Irish
Film Board, the NPP will be the first time we
have discussed the project in a public
forum. We are hoping to get constructive
feedback on the current draft and advice on
how to tackle the genre of teen drama. We
are also seeking production partners for this
project.
Contact
Jackie Larkin
Newgrange Pictures
49-50 Berystede
Leeson Park
Dublin 6
Ireland
Tel: (353) 1 4988028
Fax: (353) 1 4966128
jackie@newgrangepictures.com
www.newgrangepictures.com
NPP 2008 • 23

Shanghai-
Belleville
Clandestine & Charivari Films
France
Writer/director Show-Chun Lee
Producer Juliette Grandmont
Synopsis
The lives and the destinies of Chinese illegal
immigrants play out on the streets of
Belleville, the Parisian ‘Eldorado’ where
they hoped to find a better life. Abandoned
by aspirations that are unfulfilled, they get
caught up in a web of violence.
Liwei, nicknamed ‘The Croat’, arrives
clandestinely in France with his little brother.
They have lived all their lives in Croatia
where their parents were part of a chain of
illegal alien smugglers. But their parents
died in a gang dispute and they made it to
France, speaking neither French nor Chinese,
adrift among the Chinese diaspora
with no cultural identity.
Zhou is the mysterious man who falls
from the sky. He has come to France to
find Gine, his wife, after two years without
news of her.
Gine is a phantom. She was drawn to
France by the promise of well-paid work, but
was drowned in an ill-fated attempt to cross
over to England. From the bottom of the
sea, her voice can be heard: “I want to come
home, I want to come home, I want…”
Meilie is a Chinese girl who works for
her aunt to pay back the price of her clandestine
passage to France. She dreams of
becoming the boss of her own boutique for
designer clothing. Meilie and The Croat
have fallen in love.
It is in Belleville that they get involved in
Zhou’s search for his wife. But Zhou lapses
into madness and melancholy and The
Croat goes to China to discover this ‘great
country whose future is becoming the envy
of Europe’.
Director’s statement
I have been filming the lives of Chinese
clandestines since 1997, but today I can no
longer take a camera out in their presence.
Fiction has become the only way I can continue
with my work as a film-maker. While
respecting the truths confided to me, I shall
make the film as a personal statement.
My experience has taught me how to
direct people out on the street. But I fantasise
about apparitions coming, not from
reality, but from cinema itself. What I imagine
is a film as hybrid as our cultures.
I want to stay within the traditions of aesthetic
and social engagement, but to explore
time and space according to an oriental
logic. For the scenes involving action, violence
and phantoms, I want to try out the
rhythms, camera movements and humour
of Hong Kong cinema.
But, for the scenes of everyday life, my
western side prompts me to envision an
approach which is closer to the rawness of
documentary.
Writer/director Show-Chun Lee
Having worked as assistant to Tsai Ming-
Liang then alongside Hou Hsiao-Hsien,
Show-Chun Lee has also gained recognition
in the world of modern art. She is one of
the first movie-makers to come out of the
Chinese diaspora, and has filmed illegal
immigrants since 1997 in her films My Life Is
My Favorite Music Video (2004) and Une
jeune fille est arrivée (2006). In addition,
Show-Chun has worked as a scriptwriter for
TV series and dramas.
At more than 400,000, the Chinese population
in France is one of the largest in
Europe. The Parisian immigrant community
which comes from the region of Wenzhou has
the longest history, but no feature film has told
their story to date. Show-Chun Lee was the
first director to film it, and her approach is very
different from that of the news media. Her
point of view is from the interior and is more
delicate and respectful. Her poetic vision protects
the destinies she reveals.
24 • NPP 2008

Director
Show-Chun Lee
Producer
Juliette Grandmont
Writer
Show-Chun Lee,
Pierre Chosson
Based on
an original story
Language
French, Chinese, Croatian
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
90 mins
A group of Chinese illegal immigrants and
their personal fates intersect in the Parisian
quarter of Belleville - the ‘Eldorado’ where
they all hoped to find a better life.
Target audience
European
Budget
€ 2,376,567
Cast
tbc
Working with Tsai Ming-Liang and
studying the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien in
parallel with her work as a graphic artist,
she has developed her personal approach
to the use of space and has explored the
techniques of different media, bringing to
mind the phantoms of Kiyoshi Kurosawa,
for whom the presence of paranormal powers
is taken for granted.
Disparate elements coexist in a way
which is both modern and Asian. The use of
video inserts reconciles a fractured geography
and answers the needs of emotion,
making possible the meeting of the living
with the dead, the contemporary with the
ancestral, the past and the present, and the
Chinese in France with those back in China.
France has not been through the Cultural
Revolution or post-Soviet liberalism, but
we believe that it is nonetheless possible to
tell French stories which are as breathtaking
and as romantic as those of a generation of
Chinese cinema - films of Hong Kong, Taiwan
or of America’s Chinatowns.
Producer Juliette Grandmont
In 2000, Juliette Grandmont joined Artcam
International as a producer. She became
involved in international co-productions
such as Platform by Jia Zhang Ke and The
Road by Darezhan Omirbayev.
Together with Elise Jalladeau and Natacha
Devillers, she has since launched
Charivari Films, whose first film El custodio,
directed by Rodrigo Moreno, won the Alfred
Bauer Award at the Berlinale.
She currently runs Clandestine Films,
which has three features in production:
Ich bin eine Terroristin, directed by
Valérie Gaudissart; Le meilleur d’entre
nous, directed by Catherine Klein; and
Shanghai-Belleville.
Current status
Treatment available. In pre-production.
Partners attached: Les Petites Lumières
(Shanghai)
Budget ......................................€2,376,567
In place ........................................€221,000
Charivari & Clandestine (including
Procirep-Angoa-Agicoa) ..............€156,600
CNC...............................................€14,400
MEDIA ...........................................€50,000
Aims at the NPP
Our aims at the NPP are to find co-producers
and sales agents.
Contact
Juliette Grandmont
Clandestine & Charivari Films
10bis, rue Bisson
75020 Paris
France
Tel: (33) 1 43 58 28 66
Fax: (33) 1 43 58 34 02
jg@clandestine-films.fr
NPP 2008 • 25

The Snow
Queen
(Lumekuninganna)
F-Seitse
Estonia
Director Marko Raat
Producer Kaie-Ene Rääk
26 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
A winter fairy tale for adults. Beautiful, cold
and fatal.
Jasper, a 14-year-old teenage boy, falls
in love with an older woman, whom he
meets while roaming the streets of the city
at night. The woman invites him to her place
– she lives in an ice villa, which is under construction.
She has cancer, but the boy
doesn’t know that. She believes the proliferation
of cancer cells can be stopped by
keeping her body cold.
In love, the boy wants to stay with the
woman while the villa is being built. She
knows their relationship has fatal consequences
for the boy, and tries to suppress
both of their feelings. But Jasper’s presence
becomes more and more important to her in
terms of human closeness.
The woman’s body temperature keeps
falling. She should be dead already but, to
the amazement of doctors, claims to be
gradually feeling better.
Jasper’s love and desire grow into deep
and uncontrollable feelings for the woman.
In a moment of jealousy, he drowns Gunnar,
the contractor for the ice villa. She realises
then that Jasper is not a child any more and
that there is no way back for him into the
world of normal warm people. His genuine
affection sparks the last hope of life in her,
and a deep love in him - the first and last
love of his life.
Director’s statement
What kind of movie - A love story. Love is
a commitment, a mania, an excuse that
smothers everything trivial. Love provides a
rich soil for misunderstandings.
Great love rarely fits in with the practical
world. Lovers have to build entire worlds
from the ground up. In this movie, they do so
despite fatal disease, cold and social taboos.
Directions for developing the script -
Why does the woman need the boy in the
beginning She gets a hint from a Sami
guru that she needs to find a young man
with red hair and sacrifice him to ‘The Cold’.
The woman says to the boy’s parents
(without Jasper knowing), that she doesn’t
have children and wants Jasper to inherit
her money. This explains their doublefaced
passivity.
Villagers and the builders start to blackmail
the woman. This will open up the
woman’s background and past, bringing
more of everyday life into the film.
The woman and the boy will go on a trip
- but the road ends: it isn’t possible to go further
north.
The character of Gunnar and others will
be developed in greater depth.
Development of main characters - At the
beginning, the woman will be cool and
reserved, ignoring and totally controlling her
inner human side. By the end, she will be
hurt and humiliated physically, but emotionally
open: ‘happy, free and lazy’ - and content
with herself.
The boy will be a simple and slightly childish,
irresponsible teenager with the usual network
of parents, school and girlfriend. By the
end, through an intense and special relationship,
he has developed into a passionate
grown-up who has learned to be responsible.
Thanks to love, he is able to choose.
Visual side - Psychologically exact and intimate.
Scenes of attention, dedication, trust
and hurt. Love as an irritating game, making
the lovers dependent and happy at the same
time. In love, there are no rest periods.
Pure and bright. Frozen, intact beauty at
the beginning, later melting into a home for two
people, more and more dirty, warm and cosy.

Director
Marko Raat
Producer
Kaie-Ene Rääk
Co-producer
Knut Skoglund (Norway)
Writer
Marko Raat
Based on
an original story
Language
Estonian
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm, CinemaScope
A charismatic 40-year-old woman lures a
teenage boy into coming with her to an ice
villa where she lives as a recluse, freezing
her body to stop the proliferation of cancer
cells. She believes she has to break a young
boy’s heart if she is to survive.
Running time
100 mins
Target audience
14-plus
Budget
€ 1,100,000
Cast
tbc
Director Marko Raat
Born in 1973, Marko Raat graduated from
Tallinn University, where he studied directing.
He has made short films, documentaries
and television programmes; written
film reviews; participated in various art projects;
and directed plays.
Feature films include:
Agent Wild Duck (Agent Sinikael, 2002;
winner of the Estonian Critics Award; the
Estonian Cultural Endowment Award; and
the Estonian National Culture Foundation
Award for Best Debut. Festivals: Stockholm,
Geneva).
The Knife (Nuga, 2007; winner of the Estonian
Endowment Award for Best Feature
Film; Special Prize, Deboshir Film – Pure
Dreams X Festival, Saint Petersburg, 2007).
Production company F-Seitse
F-Seitse is an independent production company
founded in 1998 by Kaie-Ene Rääk
and six other Estonian film-makers. Since
then, the company has produced 20 creative
documentaries, two feature films and
several television series.
F-Seitse has had different international
co-operation projects supported by the
Estonian Film Foundation, the Jan Vrijman
Fund (Netherlands), Jerusalem Production
(UK), the Hubert Bals Fund (Netherlands)
and the EU.
The company’s films have received
awards from the Estonian Cultural Endowment,
been shown at international film festivals
and won various prizes.
Kaie-Ene Rääk started as a producer in
2002 with Somnambuul, directed by Sulev
Keedus. The film was shown at 25 international
film festivals, including Rotterdam,
Seattle, Haifa, Göteborg, Karlovy Vary and
Melbourne.
Current status
In pre-production.
Aims at the NPP
To find a co-producer and an international
distributor. Sound, music, final mix and lab
are available.
Contact
Kaie-Ene Rääk
F-Seitse
Koidu 17-1
10137 Tallinn
Estonia
Tel: (372) 601 5983
Mobile: (372) 5648 8902
Fax: (372) 601 5982
kaie@fseitse.ee
www.fseitse.ee
NPP 2008 • 27

Svinalängorna
(The Pigsties)
Hepp Film
Sweden
Writer/director Pernilla August
Producer Helena Danielsson
Synopsis
Freely based on the novel of the same
name by Susanna Alakoski which won the
August Prize (named after August Strindberg),
Svinalängorna is a poignant, beautiful
and dark story which is told with a lot of
humour and without bitterness.
The film starts with the main character
Lena (42) in the present day, then takes her
back in time when she one day receives a
phone call from a hospital saying that her
mother is dying. Lena is forced to confront her
past by returning to something she has buried
deep and closed the door on for 25 years.
Lena is thrown back into her teenage
years in the early 1970s, living with her
Finnish/Swedish family in the small town of
Ystad in the south of Sweden
In the present day, she has a good life,
living in a prosperous suburb with her husband,
Johan, and two daughters, Flisan and
Marja, aged 10 and 12. She has shut out all
the terrible memories from her childhood
and has had no contact at all with people
from her past. Her present-day family
believes they are all dead.
Lena has developed a very controlling
personality, which is common for abused
children who have grown up in a family
where the most important thing every day
was finding a reason to hold a party with lots
of Finnish vodka.
The truth is slowly revealed to Lena’s
family when she brings them back to her
hometown. Meeting her mother and visiting
her old home, she needs to deal with her
past; and, by confronting her memories and
letting her family know who she really is, she
can finally grieve for her childhood and get
on with her life.
Producer’s statement
Everyone was talking about it… continuously.
You know the feeling: it’s almost irritating.
I’m talking about the novel on which this film
is based.
Everyone was touched, talked about it,
discussed it. Even if it was a ‘hard read’, as
you normally say of stories which are about
growing up in difficult conditions. Still, it was
so beautiful, touching, amazing…! How
does that work Because it makes you feel. It
makes you ‘go there’ and be part of it. So I
gave in and joined the crowd of admirers.
Then something even more fantastic
happened: Pernilla August told me she
wanted to bring it to the screen with me producing
it. I’ve had the marvellous opportunity
of working with Pernilla for many years
now and on many films, with me as producer,
her as actress.
Before that, when I was ‘just’ a member
of the audience for her films, I watched and
watched and was so fascinated that this
actress could tell us so much about the
characters’ lives and make us ‘go there’,
into the world of the Annas, the Karins and
all the characters she portrayed.
That’s why, when I followed Pernilla’s
journey into directing, I became totally convinced
she is as brilliant a director and writer
as she is an actress.
Her sensitivity without being too sentimental
is exactly right for this story. And her
humour… I look forward to the coming work
and hope some of you will join me!
28 • NPP 2008

Director
Pernilla August
Producer
Helena Danielsson
Writer
Pernilla August,
Lolita Ray
Based on
the novel of the same name
by Susanna Alakoski
Language
Swedish and Finnish
Genre
Drama
Format
4K digital (Red)
Running time
90 mins
It’s only when you accept where you
came from that you can choose to go
somewhere else.
Target audience
25 and up
Budget
€ 1,900,000
Cast
tbc
Writer/director Pernilla August
Actress Pernilla August’s talent proved it
could transfer from stage to screen when
she made an indelible impression in Ingmar
Bergman’s directorial swansong Fanny and
Alexander in 1982.
Since then, she has won numerous
awards including Best Actress at the
Cannes Film Festival for her performance in
The Best Intentions, directed by Bille August
and written by Bergman.
She continued to work with Bergman
and Liv Ullman in Private Confessions in
1996 and, in 1999, became Shmi Skywalker
in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom
Menace, returning in 2002 for Episode II -
Attack of the Clones, both directed by
George Lucas.
In parallel with her acting, August also
directs for the stage. Svinalängorna is her
film directing debut.
Writer Lolita Ray
Born in 1957, Lolita Ray is a published poet,
singer-songwriter and performing artist. She
has released CDs with her bands; toured in
the USA, UK, Finland and Sweden; and is
now working on her solo album. She is also
the mother of five grown-up children and a
globetrotter looking for the adventures and
challenges of life.
She is soon to set off alone on a twoand-a-half
month walk for the environment,
‘2 Million Steps for the Climate’, through
Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
Production company Hepp Film
Hepp Film was established in 2003 by producer
Helena Danielsson, a 15-year veteran
of the Scandinavian/European film
industry. Hepp Film’s productions have travelled
successfully on the festival circuit,
receiving many awards, and have sold well
internationally.
Danielsson is a voting member of the
European Film Academy, a member of
ACE (Ateliérs du Cinema Européen) and
also a board member of the Swedish Producers
Association.
Hepp Film is one of the companies
granted slate funding by the Swedish Film
Institute for 2007-8. The company recently
entered into a distribution agreement with
Scandinavian major Nordisk Film.
Current status
Development supported by the Swedish
Film Institute (consultant Peter Gustafsson)
and regional film fund, Film i Skåne
Aims at the NPP
To meet possible co-producers, funders
and sales agents.
Contact
Helena Danielsson
Hepp Film AB
Kastellgatan 13
211 48 Malmö
Sweden
Tel: (46) 40 98 44 62
Fax: (46) 40 98 44 64
Mobile: (46) 733 42 81 84
helena@heppfilm.se
NPP 2008 • 29

Um-Hussein
(Mother Hussein)
Human Film
UK
Writer/director Mohamed
Al-Daradji
Producer Isabelle Jayne Stead
Producer Dimitri de Clercq
30 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Southern Iraq, 1991. The American army
suddenly appears, casting a long shadow
over Saddam Hussein’s bloody regime.
Hussein, a Kurdish soldier in the Iraqi
army, staggers out of a brutal military intervention,
his wounded friend’s body slumped
over his shoulder. Covered in dirt, sweat and
blood, the two men are on their way home.
Exhausted, they stop to spend the night
beside a campfire in the desert. Hussein
pulls out a flute and plays the lyrical melody
he’s written for his soon-to-be-born son.
At dawn, an Iraqi military Jeep suddenly
looms up. Hussein approaches and, desperate
to shield his injured buddy, is mistakenly
taken for a rebel. He’s immediately
arrested and carted off to prison…
Northern Iraq, 2003. Two weeks after the fall
of Saddam Hussein. News spreads that several
prisoners of war have been found alive in
the south. Um-Hussein, a frail old woman
dressed in black, and Ahmed, her 12-year-old
grandson, trudge along a dusty mountain
road. She’s on a mission, determined to find
the son who’s never returned from the war…
Her only son: Hussein.
As these two forgotten souls traipse
across the battered landscape, hitching
rides with strangers and crossing paths with
fellow travellers on all too similar missions,
their journey runs parallel to that of Hussein
so many years before.
Their stories intertwine… As the captive
is shuttled from one prison to the next, steeling
himself against the agonies and despair
that await him at every turn, his mother
gradually comes to witness the true horrors
of a senseless war run amok.
And Ahmed, who so yearns for the father
he’s never met, picks up his flute and plays
Hussein’s once unfinished tune… a tune
that drifts across the vast Iraqi desert.
Director’s statement
Not a single Iraqi family remains untouched
by Saddam Hussein’s horrific killing fields.
To date, more than 300 mass graves have
been excavated in Iraq. The most recent
excavation uncovered a grave of 1,500 Kurdish
people. An estimated one million people
are still missing. Today, thousands of
families continue to search for loved ones
who disappeared under Saddam Hussein’s
bloody, 35-year dictatorship.
Um-Hussein is a deeply personal story,
somewhat inspired by my own aunt, who
also lost a son under Saddam’s regime. The
film spans three generations of one family. It
follows the stories of a Kurdish soldier, and
the elderly mother and son who go off in
search of him. Those characters respectively
represent the past, the present and my
hope for Iraq’s future.
I will use primarily non-professional
actors in Um-Hussein. By casting real people
with a particular affinity to the characters
as written, and by working with them in an
improvisational way, I hope to elicit performances
that draw on their real-life experiences
and instincts.
Although Iraq has been ravaged by war,
it still abounds in many beautiful landscapes,
from the lush mountains of the north to the
marshes, rivers and deserts in the south.
Past and present live side by side, just like
the parallel stories in our film. Old Babylon
and its hanging gardens stand proudly
beside Saddam’s mass graves. American
checkpoints have sprung up next to Republican
prisons and the ancient city of Summer.
More than anything in this note of intention,
I want to emphasise that I am not making
a ‘political film’. I see it more as a
humanist film, telling a human story that all
people can relate to. While the story
inevitably includes many political elements,
they are not at all the thrust of this film. It will
be told from my point of view, from my
awareness, as an Iraqi man recounting the
story of his people to an international audience.
Um-Hussein is a bitter search for
truth. We hope it will inspire hope for Iraq.
Director Mohamed Al-Daradji
Mohamed Al-Daradji was born in Baghdad in
1978. He studied film and theatre at the Art
Institute before fleeing the country when his
cousin, a political activist, was assassinated.

Director
Mohamed Al-Daradji
Producer
Isabelle Jayne Stead,
Mohamed Al-Daradji,
Dimitri de Clercq
Executive producer
Pippa Cross,
Antonia Bird
Writer
Mohamed Al-Daradji,
Jennifer Norridge,
Mathel Khasea
Based on
an original story
Language
Arabic, Kurdish
Genre
Drama
A young boy and his grandmother
venture through Iraq on a quest to
find his missing father.
Format
35mm
Running time
100 mins approx
Target audience
Male/female, 25-plus
He continued his studies in Holland at the
Media Academy in Hilversum. From 1998 to
2002, he worked as a cameraman for Dutch
TV. He later attended the Northern Film
School in Leeds, UK, where he received a
Masters in Cinematography and Directing.
After Saddam’s regime was overthrown
in 2003, Mohamed returned to Iraq. What he
found served as the baptism of fire he needed
for his first feature, Ahlaam, which was
shot under brutal circumstances on location
in Baghdad in 2004, premiered at the Rotterdam
International Film Festival in 2006
and represented Iraq in the Oscar and Golden
Globe submissions.
Production company Human Film
Human Film makes films with a conscience
that aim to break down cultural divides. It is
committed to producing cutting-edge works
that entertain, inspire and revolutionise filmmaking
as an art form.
Human Film produced the award-winning
film Ahlaam (2006), and recently premiered
War, Love, God & Madness (2008), a featurelength
documentary shot in Iraq.
Current status
Um-Hussein is expected to go into preproduction
in late October 2008.
Total budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€1,479,600
Finance in place
Fonds Sud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€130,000
UKFC New Cinema Fund . . . . . .€300,000
UKFC Development Fund . . . . . .€20,000
Screen Yorkshire D’ment Fund . .€25,000
In-kind equipment/services . . . .€150,000
Partners attached: CRM-114/Dimitri De
Clercq (France); Cinema Broadcast Centre/Rashid
Mashawari (Palestine); Iraqi Al-
Rafidain/Atia Al-Daradji (Iraq).
Iraqi Al-Rafidain, our sister company in
Iraq, has met with the Prime Minister’s
office, which will support the production.
Location scouting, pre-casting and securing
facilities and permissions needed to film in
Iraq are already underway. Having worked
on Ahlaam, Iraqi Al-Rafidain have already
established a good working relationship
with many suppliers of production facilities
throughout the Middle East, including
Kodak-Dubai.
The film is also morally supported by
The Sundance Institute. UK company Goalpost
Film (Clubland, The Escapist) are
onboard as world sales agent. Pippa Cross
(Vanity Fair, Bloody Sunday) is our UK
executive producer. Our creative executive
producer is acclaimed director Antonia Bird,
who is helping with the script edit.
Aims at the NPP
Since the director of our project is
Iraqi/Dutch, it is important to us that the
foundations of our project reflect that. We
hope at the Netherlands Production Platform
to meet like-minded film-makers.
As we plan to shoot in late
October/November 2008, it is important for us
to meet with people who take an innovative,
out-of-the-box approach and ideally have
access to funding beyond public subsidies.
Budget
€ 1,479,600
Cast
tbc
Contact
Isabelle Jayne Stead
Human Film
ADP House
35 Hanover Square
Leeds LS31BQ
UK
Tel: (44) 1132 438880
Mobile: (44) 7835 378 454
isabelle@humanfilm.co.uk
www.humanfilm.co.uk
NPP 2008 • 31

1-900
(06)
Column Film/Ironworks
Netherlands/US
Director John Turturro
Producer Gijs van de Westelaken
Synopsis
1-900 is the story of Patti and Leroy, two
people who ‘meet’ each other through
phone-sex chatting. As their calls become
more frequent, their conversations turn into
hard, explicit and unabashed phone wars.
Gradually, they reveal more of themselves
and of their real lives - a little towards each
other, a lot towards us. But will they ever
really meet
Producer’s statement
Before Theo van Gogh was murdered in
2004, we were working on adapting his successfull
film Interview in English. Interview
was a typical Theo van Gogh film; dialogue
driven, with full attention on the acting,
made in a frantic, uncompromising style.
That had also to do with the technique of
filming Theo used in recent years; Interview
was shot with three digital camera’s, resulting
in an abundance of shots which enabled
him to make the film as tense as in real life.
As one critic commented: Theo van Gogh
has invented a new film language.
After Theo’s death, we felt it would be a
shame not to continue working in that new
language. We decided to remake three similar
Theo van Gogh films: Interview (2007,
directed by Steve Buscemi, starring Buscemi
and Sienna Miller), Blind Date (2008,
directed by Stanley Tucci, starring Tucci
and Patricia Clarkson), and 1-900 (2009, to
be directed by John Turturro).
Director John Turturro
John Turturro studied at the Yale School of
Drama and, for his theatrical debut, created
the title role of John Patrick Shanley’s
Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, for which he
won an OBIE Award and a Theater World
Award. Since then, he has appeared regularly
on stage and recently directed Yasmin
Reza’s A Spanish Play at New York’s Classic
Stage Company.
Turturro has appeared in more than 60
films, including Martin Scorsese’s The Color
of Money; Tony Bill’s Five Corners; Spike
Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues
and Jungle Fever; Robert Redford’s Quiz
Show; Peter Weir’s Fearless; Tom DiCillo’s
Box of Moonlight; Francesco Rosi’s La
Tregua; Allison Anders’ Grace of My Heart;
Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock; Robert
DeNiro’s The Good Shepherd; and Joel and
Ethan Coen’s Miller’s Crossing, The Big
Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou
For his lead role in the Coens’ Barton Fink, he
won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film
Festival and the David Di Donatello Award.
For his directorial debut, Mac, Turturro
won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes. He has
since directed Illuminata and Romance
and Cigarettes.
In 2007, Turturro appeared in Michael
Bay’s Transformers, Anthony Hopkins’ Slipstream,
and Noah Baumbach’s Margot at
the Wedding. This year, he has been in
Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened and
the Adam Sandler comedy You Don’t Mess
With the Zohan. He is currently filming the
sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Producer Bruce Weiss
32 • NPP 2008

Director
John Turturro
Producer
Gijs van de Westelaken
Writer
Michael DiJiacomo
Based on
Theo van Gogh’s film 06,
the third film in the Triple
Theo Project, following
Interview (directed by Steve
Buscemi) and Blind Date
(directed by Stanley Tucci)
Language
English
Genre
Drama
Theo van Gogh
1-900 is the story of Patti and Leroy, two
people who ‘meet’ each other through
phone-sex chatting. But will they ever
really meet
Format
35mm
Running time
90 mins
Target audience
Arthouse & crossover
Budget
€ 1,200,000
Cast
tbc
Production company Column Film
Column Film is an independent television
and feature film production company founded
in 1999 by Gijs van de Westelaken and
Theo van Gogh.
As a tribute to van Gogh, who was murdered
in 2004, Column, in co-operation with
New York’s Ironworks. is producing three
English-language remakes of van Gogh’s
films. Last year Interview, directed by Steve
Buscemi and starring Buscemi and Sienna
Miller, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
It was followed at Sundance this year
by Blind Date, directed by Stanley Tucci and
starring Tucci and Patricia Clarkson.
Principal photography will start on 1-900
this winter.
Current status
Final version of screenplay; final financing
stage.
Aims at the NPP
Finding European co-production partners,
broadcasters and/or distributors.
Contact
Gijs van de Westelaken
Column Film
Van Eeghenstraat 92
1071 GL Amsterdam
Netherlands
Tel: (31) 20 572 2700
Fax: (31) 20 572 2701
Mobile: (31) 6 5346 1357
westelaken@columntv.nl
www.columnfilm.com
NPP 2008 • 33

A Kronstadt
Tale
Van Lieshout Filmproducties
Netherlands
Producer/Director
Ben van Lieshout
Producer Bea de Visser
Producer Hans Eijses
34 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Nadia (17) lives by herself in Kronstadt on
the naval island of Kotlin, off the coast near
St Petersburg. Her mother is terminally ill in
hospital. Nadia works for a sail-maker,
alongside a number of older women.
Sergei (42), who lives in the same apartment
building, imposes himself on Nadia but
she does not want him.
Nadia has a boyfriend: Sasha (20), who is
in the navy. Nadia likes to look at him when
he is working or playing sports, sometimes
even through binoculars. On one occasion as
she gazes longingly at him, she hears that he
is to be transferred to Vladivostok.
Nadia wants to enjoy their final hours
together for as long as possible. She silently
makes a wish: ‘I wish for us to be happy, and
that our happiness will last a long time’. They
pick up a stray dog and visit a friend of
Sasha’s, Pyotr, who is a cinema projectionist.
As if mesmerised, Nadia stares from the
projection room at an old Russian film, Long
Happy Life (Gennadi Shpalikov, 1966). She
asks Pyotr what the film is about and he
mumbles: ‘Something that used to happen -
people looking for happiness.’ Nadia watches
the protagonists walk through a deserted,
misty wood. They seem happy, full of
anticipation, but simultaneously overcome
by a sense of melancholy. Happiness is evidently
not allowed to last for long.
Nadia and Sasha wander on through an
almost imaginary landscape in the strange
light of one of those famous white nights,
where it simply refuses to get dark. They will
make love once more under cloudless skies
from which the sun has gone.
Then comes the parting. Nadia promises
to take good care of Sasjenka, the stray dog
she has named after Sasha. And Sasha
promises to return when the first snow falls.
Once again, a yearning gaze through
binoculars - but this time it is not Nadia’s gaze
but Sergei’s. He keeps pursuing Nadia, who
has heard nothing from her boyfriend for
months, in spite of the long letters she writes
to him. Nadia continues to wait and yearn,
although she has her weak moments. Her life
has not become any easier, certainly not
after her mother dies. She visits the grave as
faithfully as she once did the hospital.
Nadia discovers she is pregnant. The
women at work are cynical about Sasha’s
return, but Nadia keeps her cool. One day,
the dog disappears. With Pyotr, Nadia
searches for him, desperately but to no avail.
Sergei tells her where the dog is; Nadia discovers
him dead. She is inconsolable.
The first snow falls. Still no Sasha, yet
Nadia indignantly rejects a proposal of marriage
from Pyotr. Nadia sits by her mother’s
snow-covered grave. She sees a figure
coming closer through the binoculars:
Sasha. An image of unshakeable happiness.
But, taking us back to a past that is
lost forever, a song reminds us that great
loss may also lie behind every happiness.
Director’s statement
After my award-winning feature De verstekeling
(The Stowaway, 1997) and the documentary
Petersburg Places and Paintings
(2004), this new feature will be the third project
in which Russia’s past and today’s reality
form a remarkable background for a lyrical,
poetic and occasionally grim story about
a 17-year-old girl.
I would like to make this film with local
actors, recruited from the Marine Theatre
Company based in Kronstadt, site of the
famous Kronstadt uprising on the island of
Kotlin near St Petersburg, during Russia’s
revolutionary period. The whole film will be
shot on this relatively small island, which
was a no-go area until the mid 1990s.
My feature films are based in reality or in
actual situations and my documentary work
is often highly stylised (The Zone, 1999;
Night at the Mall, 2001). The outcome has
always been a merging of fictional and documentary
elements.
This film will use the specific architecture
and often dramatic atmosphere of Kronstadt
and its naval elements. It will be an auteur and
character-driven film with strong images and
natural acting. For me, it’s a film about trust
and hope personified in a strong, magnetic
character, shot in the enchanting summer of
the white nights and the mesmeric wintertime.

Director
Ben van Lieshout
Producer
Ben van Lieshout,
Bea de Visser,
Hans Eijses
Writer
Céline Linssen
Based on
an original story
Language
Russian
Genre
Drama
Format
HD transfer/35mm
Running time
90 mins
Despite personal setbacks, a young girl
continues to wish for and believe in the
possibility of a long and happy life.
Target audience
15 and up; European arthouse;
international festivals; TV in
Europe, especially Eastern
Europe and Russia
Budget
€ 1,200,000
Cast
tbc
Director Ben van Lieshout
Ben van Lieshout (The Netherlands) is an
independent and award winning director,
screenwriter and producer. He directed
short films, documentaries and feature films.
1983 Het licht van Cadiz/The Light of Cadiz
1988 De wal/The Shore
1989 Schutting/Fence
1991 Passagiers/Passengers
1995 Butterfly
1997 De verstekeling/The Stowaway
1999 De zone/The Zone
2001 Winkelhart/Night at the Mall
2002 Reis naar het paradijs/Trip to Paradise
2003 Lapje grond/Allotment
Week 19 – Observations from
Rotterdam
2004 Petersburg Places and Paintings
2006 Locatie Tussenland
2007 De muze/The Muse
Writer Céline Linssen
Céline Linssen has collaborated on a number
of theatre shows; has published many
articles on film; and has edited several magazines
and catalogues. Her novel, Duet,
was published in 2007.
Film and theatre work:
1999 De nacht van de vier hoeden
De laatste liefde van Mata Hari
2004 Toen ’t licht verdween
2006 Zomerdag
Koeraaj, Koeraaj
2008 Shocking Blue
Boven is het stil
Current status
Treatment available. The script is in finaldraft
stage. The project was developed with
financial support from the Dutch Film Fund
(project and script development). We will
apply to various Dutch funds and broadcasters,
and hope to raise about 70% of the
budget, which means that from co-production
and additional funding we plan to raise
the remaining 30% (€350,000)
Total budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€1,200,000
Financing in place . . . . . . . . . . . . .€45,000
Financial Plan:
Dutch Film Fund . . . . . . . . . . . . .€375,000
Broadcast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€90,000
Co-Production Fund . . . . . . . . . .€180,000
Dutch Cultural Broadcast Fund . .€150,000
City of Utrecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€7,500
Rotterdam Film Fund . . . . . . . . . .€50,000
Subtotal . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€852,500
Co-producers & additional finance €347,500
Partners attached: Anotherfilm/Bea de
Visser, Hans Eijses.
Aims at the NPP
We are looking for co-producing partners, particularly
in Germany, Scandinavia, Russia or
France. We are also seeking an international
sales agent and international distribution.
Preferably all of the above will love
auteur-driven and character-driven productions
with a visual, cinematographic style
that captures audiences and gives way to
imagination and hope.
Contact
Ben van Lieshout
Van Lieshout Filmproducties
Kerkstraat 8
3431 CR Nieuwegein
Netherlands
Tel: (31) 30 601 3040
ben.vanlieshout@wanadoo.nl
Bea de Visser & Hans Eijses
AnotherFilm
Lloydstraat 15-e
3024 EA Rotterdam
The Netherlands
T. +31 10 2449874
M. +31 6 48450103
mail@anotherfilm.org
www.anotherfilm.org
NPP 2008 • 35

Lourdes
Holland Harbour Productions
Netherlands
Writer/Directors André van der
Hout and Adri Schrover
Producer Nadadja Kemper
Producer Rob Vermeulen
36 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Mathieu Verlinden (28) works as a prenatal
researcher in a medical centre. His ailing
mother dies. She had hoped to go with him on
a pilgrimage to Lourdes but Mathieu could
never find the time. Her Catholic funeral
reaches an unusual conclusion: she wanted
to be cremated. Mathieu leaves for Lourdes
with his mother’s ashes.
Dusk falls outside Limoges. Mathieu hits
something with his car. Walking back, he
finds a six-year-old girl dead. In a moment of
despair, he decides to leave her there.
He stops for a break at a small hotel down
the road. Juliette, the owner is attractive. She
pours him a drink and asks no further questions.
Slowly, Mathieu comes to his senses.
Not the best moment to meet the woman of
your dreams. Mathieu returns to Holland, his
mothers' ashes unscattered.
He is surprised at how easily he sinks back
into his old life. He examines unborn foetuses
without batting an eyelid. The tragedy seems
a distant memory: as if it never happened.
One year later. His sister’s seven-year-old
daughter briefly goes missing and his sister
becomes a nervous wreck. Mathieu begins to
realise what effect the accident in France could
have had. He returns to Limoges.
Juliette is still there, as attractive as ever.
Initially checking in for one night, Mathieu
stays for nine. One night, he discovers a girl’s
bedroom: toys on the ground left unexpectedly
and then frozen in time. The next morning,
Mathieu disappears.
Rotterdam, two months later. Juliette pays
Mathieu a surprise visit. Mathieu shows her
around. They get stoned and sing along to a
tearjerker on the car radio. Mathieu realises
that he is incapable of having a normal relationship
with her as long as the accident
remains unspoken. He asks her to leave after
a week. France, some months later. Together
again. Mathieu meets Juliette’s ex. He tells
about his missing girl, his inattentiveness, and
his guilt. The little body that was later found on
the roadside, run over by some bastard.
The end of summer. Juliette would like to
have Mathieu’s child, settle with him in Rotterdam
and start afresh. The following morning,
Mathieu flees again. The next morning, he
scatters his mother’s ashes in the sea.
Five years later. Mathieu is on holiday with
his new family. He finally manages to make it
to Lourdes. On the return journey, he stops at
Juliette’s. Juliette is alone. He reveals his
secret bluntly: I killed your daughter. She
looks down the road and nods: she already
knew.
His new wife has gone for a stroll with the
kids. She watches Mathieu and Juliette from
the café’s terrace. There is silence on the way
back. Did you love her very much Yes, very
much. Darkness slowly descends.
Director’s statement
Lourdes tells a story of a great love - immense
happiness coupled with a fatal accident.
The film will not be narrated from Mathieu’s
perspective alone. The phone call Juliette
ignored on their first meeting is initially
an insignificant detail. Only afterwards do
we see her reaction and learn more about
her background, and about her relationship
with her first husband who was looking after
their daughter on that fateful evening.
Juliette realises fairly quickly that she
has fallen in love with the person responsible
for the accident. She searches for an
answer to the question of why someone
would drive on after such a thing. However,
it only brings her closer to the man who did
it. Mathieu’s inability to deal with the dilemma
contrasts with her own: she finds a way
to deal with her loss and forgives him.
Implicit, discontinuous images, fragmented
scenes with loose edges, unfinished, yet
having a significant emotional impact. In that
respect, this film contrasts with our previous
two (De arm van Jezus and Het zwijgen),
which were both more plot-driven. Lourdes
is intended to be more schematic, with
greater emphasis on the actors.
The choice of simplicity allows us to pay
significant attention to the depiction of the
characters. A portrait of a man and a
woman, immoral yet recognisable, absurd
yet enigmatic, making us lose sight of the
freakish path of fate. It could all have been
so different. Happiness and devastation are

Director
André van der Hout,
Adri Schrover
Producer
Nadadja Kemper,
Rob Vermeulen
Writer
André van der Hout,
Adri Schrover
Based on
an original story
Language
Dutch, French
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
90 mins
Mathijs is on the way to Lourdes with his
mother’s ashes. During the trip to the south
of France, he runs over a child. On the same
night, he meets the woman of his dreams.
Target audience
16-plus
Budget
€ 2,500,000
Cast
tbc
separated by the narrowest of margins.
A simple tale, ambiguously told. The film
opens with a man (Juliette’s ex) desperately
prodding the bottom of a lake with a stick.
This scene is repeated at a later stage when
it becomes clear that he fears his daughter
has drowned. The image nestles in Mathieu’s
mind, never to be dispelled. And the
viewers take it home with them.
Director André van der Hout &
Adri Schrover
Een weeslied (Orphansong). Documentary.
1995.
Noorderlicht. Science programmes in VPRO
series 1995-1997.
De overkant (The Other Side). Short. 1998
De illusie aan de macht, 1412 dagen kabinet
den Uyl. Feature-length documentary. 1998.
Zuiderzeekroniek – Verhalen van voor de
dijk (Tales From Before the Dykes). 2000.
De yzeren hond (Iron Dog). Opera. 2000.
De flat. Documentary. 2001.
Stad (The City of R). Documentary. 2001.
De arm van Jezus (The Arm of Jezus). Feature.
2003.
Methode Mansholt (Mansholt Method). Documentary.
2003.
Week 19 – Waarnemingen uit een wereldstad
(Week 19: Observations from a Metropolis).
Six spots. 2003
Geheime Dienst (Secret Service). Documentary.
2004.
Meisjes voor Maasoord (Girls for Maasoord).
Documentary. 2004.
Het zwijgen (Song From the Other Side).
Feature. With Adri Schrover. 2006.
Production Company Holland Harbour
2002 Carol Off! (short; 20 mins)
2003 The Tiger in Town (TV
documentary; 50 mins)
2004 School Swap (children’s TV
series; 4x15 mins)
Expelled (TV series; 2x40 mins)
2005 Jamila (documentary; 20 mins;)
2005-7 Vanished (TV series; 33x50 mins)
2006 Living Kitchen (pilot for 3D series)
[dis]believers test (Online
children’s game)
[un]believable (children’s
TV series; 3x20 mins)
A Drifting Heritage (TV
documentary; 50 mins)
2008 In the Shadow of a Mosque
(TV documentary; 50 mins)
Chicago Block - Stories from
the Elevator (TV documentary)
Camp stories (feature film;
90 mins; in production)
Last Conversation (feature film;
85 mins; in production)
Current status
The Dutch Film Fund has given financial support
to develop the treatment/screenplay.
André van der Hout and Adri Schrover are currently
writing the script with additional financial
support from the Rotterdam Film Fund.
Aims at the NPP
To find a French - and/or Belgian co-producer
and distributor to develop and finance this
project.
Contact
Nadadja Kemper
Rob Vermeulen
Nico Geusebroek
Holland Harbour Productions BV
Willemskade 22
3016 DM Rotterdam
Tel: (31) 10 233 1400
Fax: (31) 10 233 1401
info@hollandharbour.nl
www.hollandharbour.nl
NPP 2008 • 37

Olga -
Tomorrow
I’ll Dance
(Olga - Morgen dans ik weer)
Sigma Pictures Productions
Netherlands
Writer/director Hans Hylkema
Producer Matthijs van Heijningen
Producer Guurtje Buddenberg
38 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
1953. Eight-year-old Olga de Haas is literally
picked off the street by the Russian ballet
teacher Sonia Gaskell. Eight years later, she
is a member of the corps de ballet of Gaskell’s
company. They move to Amsterdam, where
she explores the nightlife - a tough combination
with a heavy rehearsal schedule.
The leads in Swan Lake and Giselle are
now exclusively for the 20-year-old Olga,
who is acclaimed at an international ballet
concourse in Moscow. The press love the
beautiful young woman who combines the
arts and pop culture; her pictures are in all
the glossies.
Olga can hide her double life for the time
being but, under pressure, she develops
anorexia and alcohol addiction. She comes
late or not at all to daily rehearsals and,
when Gaskell has to leave the company,
she is personally affected. Her first serious
relationship - with barman Gerry - comes to
an end but she makes a miraculous comeback
and, despite a bad foot injury, performs
in 1969 with Rudolf Nureyev, a dream
come true. A year later, she collapses on
stage. After her recovery, she does not end
her career but declares, “Tomorrow I’ll
dance again.”
A new relationship and triumph on stage
in the role of Juliet follow, mixed with alcohol
and pills. When she performs Juliet for the
third time and stabs herself with the knife at
the end, there is a strong symbolic link with
her own life. The night after the premiere,
she collapses again.
In a nightmare, she is in the municipal
park and the characters from the ballets she
danced in are on an island. One of them, the
evil sorcerer Rothbard from Swan Lake, is a
bird with the face of her father. He beckons
her and automatically she wades through
the water to him…
On the island she collapses, exhausted.
Olga de Haas lacks the will and the strength
to go on. Two years later, in 1978, Julia,
Giselle and Odette, the Swan Queen, die in
the exhausted and wrecked body of Olga de
Haas, aged 34.
Dance gave her wings; life broke them.
Director’s statement
I am interested in biographies of people set
against the background of a specific era.
The main character in this biopic is Holland’s
first real ballet star, Olga de Haas,
who lived the turbulent life of a pop star in
the 1960s and 1970s, when youth culture
first emerged.
The world of classical and modern dance
is fascinating because dancers defy gravity,
and everybody wants to fly. But there is a
reverse side to this: dancers have to take
care of their bodies and that demands a disciplined
way of life. Olga is torn between
that ascetic soberness and the temptations
of the exciting nightlife that a girl her age
wants to enjoy.
This is the drama of the main character,
who also has to deal with struggles within
the National Ballet. The look of the film is a
combination between a classical editing
style for the dance sequences and a more
documentary approach for the daily-life
scenes in the swinging 1960s.
Writer/director Hans Hylkema
Born in 1946, Hans Hylkema worked as a
cameraman after attending the Dutch Film
Academy, then went on to become a director
of features, shorts and documentaries.
His feature films include the
Dutch/German/Belgian/Indonesian coproduction
Oeroeg (1993), a period film
shot entirely in Indonesia; Juliet’s Secret
(1987), about a Turkish schoolgirl living in
the Netherlands and playing the female
lead in Romeo and Juliet; The Kingmaker
Connection (1983), a thriller about a
hushed-up Dutch political scandal from
the 1950s; and the feature-length TV
movie Soekarno Blues, about a fictional
meeting between Queen Juliana and
Indonesia’s first president.
Hylkema has also directed a number of
acclaimed music documentaries, including
Last Date – Eric Dolphy (1991), which was
released in the US.

Director
Hans Hylkema
Producer
Matthijs van Heijningen,
Guurtje Buddenberg
Writer
Hans Hylkema,
Barbara Jurgens
Based on
an original story
Language
Dutch, English
Genre
Biopic
Format
35mm
Running time
100 mins approx
Biopic based on the life of prima ballerina
Olga de Haas, a talented young woman who
abused her body with alcohol and anorexia
until self-destruction was the only way out.
Target audience
Broad educated arthouse
audience, 16-61
Budget
minimum of € 2,650,000
Cast
tbc
Production company
Sigma Pictures
Sigma have been independent feature-film
producers since 1974. The company has
produced 36 feature films, mainstream as
well as arthouse, mostly based on Dutch literature
and original screenplays.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Sigma produced
some of the biggest successes in
Dutch cinema, including the first two pictures
by Marleen Gorris, and were coproducers
of Sally Potter’s Orlando.
In 1999, Matthijs van Heijningen was
awarded The Golden Calf for his contribution
to Dutch cinema. The company’s film
1000 rosen (1994), directed by Theu Boermans,
won the Golden Calf for Best Film.
Sigma are currently developing a historical
action drama with Boermans; this project
with Hans Hylkema; and a period crime
drama with André van Duren.
Current status
The screenplay is available and casting for
the main parts, Olga and Gaskell, is complete.
We have applied for support from the
Dutch Film Fund, and Dutch broadcaster
NPS is participating in the film for the TV
rights and the CoBo Fund.
Dutch film distributor Bridge Entertainment
will be distributing in Benelux against
a minimum guarantee and P&A costs.
Aims at the NPP
We hope to find a co-producing country -
Belgium, Eastern Europe or the Baltic states
- that still has a strong classical ballet tradition
and a ballet company that will be able to
perform classics such as Swan Lake,
Giselle and Romeo and Juliet. Hopefully,
this will also be a country where there is still
an authentic ‘classical’ theatre, like the
Amsterdam Municipal Theatre of the 1960s
and 1970s.
Given the dramatic content of the role,
we expect to have to use a Dutch actress for
the part of Olga, and will thus need a standin
for the ballet sequences (the same for the
role of Nureyev, of course).
Apart from this, co-producing with a
European country could mean access to
more financing through national funds and
via Eurimages. The present budget of
€2,650,000 is very tight for a ‘costume’ picture,
but is the maximum we can raise in
the Netherlands. It would be ideal if we
could increase the budget with contributions
from other national funds, Eurimages
or tax credits.
Contact
Matthijs van Heijningen
Guurtje Buddenberg
Sigma Pictures Productions BV
Singel 132
1015 AG Amsterdam
Netherlands
Tel: (00) 31 20 535 3320
Fax: (00) 31 20 535 3329
info@sigmapictures.com
www.sigmapictures.com
NPP 2008 • 39

Shocking Blue
Waterland Film
Netherlands
Director Mark de Cloe
Producer Jan van der Zanden
Producer Wilant Boekelman
Producer Koji Nelissen
40 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
William, Jack and Chris have been friends
for as long as they can remember, despite
the fact that their personalities differ a
great deal.
They spend their time watching football,
riding their mopeds and selecting bulbs in
the tulip fields. If something is wrong with
one of them, at least one of the other two is
ready to step in - until one day in April.
Jack ends up crushed under the wheels
of a tractor, which William was driving. Suddenly,
there is nothing left of the boys’
friendship: things they always used to do
together mean nothing when they are done
by just two of them. Chris makes an effort,
but William is a lump of impenetrable rock.
Inside, he’s in turmoil, secretly wondering if
Jack going off with Marianne, the girl whose
come-on look William had been too afraid to
answer the night before, had anything to do
with the accident.
William hardly dares think about it, let
alone talk. And that’s just as well, because
in the bulb-fields people don’t talk about
things like that.
When summer comes, Marianne suddenly
reappears: she is pregnant from that one
night with Jack. William sees the solution:
there, in Marianne’s womb, is something that
can bring Jack back to life. William throws
himself into this new way of looking at things,
doing all he possibly can for Marianne.
Again, everyone can see that something
is wrong; but again, no one talks about it.
Then the unborn baby dies. When William
finally talks to Chris, he realises that he’s not
responsible for either death.
William, Chris and Marianne bury the
foetus together. Then all three of them visit
Jack’s grave.
Director’s statement
With Shocking Blue, I want to make a film
about teenage dreams just before they
bloom, in that period when everything is still
possible. Teenage films are often told from
a girl’s perspective. In my opinion, it is
important that such a turbulent stage in life
is told from a boy’s perspective. Boys, too,
test their friendship and experience the
double taste of love for the first time.
In this film, nature plays an important
part. As a matter of fact, I see nature as a
cast member. It doesn’t intrude, but it is
simply omnipresent in the story, without
explanation.
The cinematographic style of the script
goes very well with my style of filming. But
the strongest characteristic is that the
drama is left open, even if it’s very clear
what’s going on. In this way, the script gets
more space to breathe, enabling it to blossom.
This gives me the possibility to make
a recognisable, poetic narration that should
be enchanting.
Director Mark de Cloe
Emmy-nominated director Mark de Cloe
attended the Rietveld Academy and the
Binger Film Institute. In 1994, he made Miss
Blanche and in 1995 Leklicht, lekliefde.
His short film Gitanes (VPRO) received
the NPS prize for Best Short Film in 1998
and won a prize at the International Film
Festival of Avanca in 1999.
In 1998, de Cloe adapted the novella
Everest and this was followed, in 1999, by the
short film Moët & Chandon. He received the
NPS Prize for Best Short Film in 2004 for one
of the episodes in Boy Meets Girl Stories.
In 2004, his Valse wals, which was the
closing film at the Netherlands Film Festival,
received two nominations for a Golden Calf;
got a distribution deal; was shown at the
Dance on Camera Festival in New York and
LA, and was a winner at the Prix Italia in
Performing Arts 2006.
In 2005, de Cloe directed the Talpa
series Lieve lust (NL Film) and, in 2006, the
film Zomerdag (NPS) and episodes of the
Talpa series Koppels (Egmond Film).
He is currently working on the feature
film Het leven uit een dag.

Director
Mark de Cloe
Producer
Jan van der Zanden,
Wilant Boekelman,
Koji Nelissen
Writer
Céline Linssen
Based on
an original story
Language
Dutch
Genre
Coming-of-age drama
Format
35mm
Running time
90 mins
The close friendship between three boys
receives a serious blow when one of them
dies. A story about loss, guilt, love and
impotence, situated amid the infernal
colours of the Dutch bulb-fields.
Target audience
Men and women, 20-65
Budget
€ 1,217,000
Cast
tbc
Production company
Waterland Film
Waterland Film specialises in producing and
co-producing feature films and feature documentaries
which combine interesting content
and innovative cinematographic qualities.
Producers Jan van der Zanden and Wilant
Boekelman work closely with the writer and
the director, and aim to make feature films
that capture and challenge the viewer by
telling touching stories and playing with genres.
In 2003, Waterland was selected as a
‘Producer on the Move’ in Cannes.
Feature films include Happy Family (’n
beetje verliefd), Nightrun (Nachtrit; Golden
Calf 2006 for Best Male Actor and Best Male
Supporting Actor); Making Waves (Deining,
Golden Calf 2004), Sleeping Rough (Tussenland,
Tiger Award 2002) and Adrift (Drift).
Current status
Pre-production is planned for January/
February 2009 and shooting for 22 days is
expected during March/April/May 2009, for
release in the autumn of the same year.
The script is at final draft and funded by
the Dutch Film Fund, the CoBo Fund, VPRO
and the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund.
75% of the total budget is in place.
Finance plan
Dutch Film Fund . . . . . . . . . . . . .€400,000
Dutch Public Broadcaster . . . . . . .€90,000
Coproduction Fund . . . . . . . . . .€177,000
Dutch Cultural Broadcast &
Support Fund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€200,000
Distributor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€30,000
Eurimages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€200,000
Co-producer/additional finance . .€120,000
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .€1,217,000
Aims at the NPP
We are looking for co-producers in Germany
and Luxembourg and sales agents
and/or foreign broadcasters for pre-sales.
Contact
Jan van der Zanden,
Wilant Boekelman
Waterland Film
De Kempenaerstraat 11a
1051 CJ Amsterdam
Netherlands
Tel: (31) 20 682 2164
Fax: (31) 20 682 3061
mail@waterlandfilm.nl
www.waterlandfilm.nl
NPP 2008 • 41

Sonny Boy
Shooting Star Filmcompany
Netherlands
Writer/director Maria Peters
Producer Hans Pos
42 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Sonny Boy is the true love story of two ordinary
people: Dutch mother of four Rika; and
the much younger Waldemar from Surinam.
Their love is able to survive all the prejudices
and obstacles of the world around them, but
can’t survive the destructive power of war.
The true gripping story of Sonny Boy
starts in the year 1911. Rika, a Dutch girl,
marries William; it is a marriage that is
doomed to fail. Rika finally escapes with her
children and, just to make a living and with
the help of her brother Marcel, starts a pension
in The Hague.
Meanwhile, in Surinam, the young and
dreamy Waldemar, much younger than
Rika, is an excellent swimmer. His father
runs off with a new wife and his lonely mother
calls Waldemar ‘the ocean swimmer’,
which means that he’s supposed to go to
Holland to study.
On the day that Rika’s children move in
with her at the new pension, they meet a
man who’s looking for a room. He’s friendly,
young and sympathetic. However… he’s
black. It’s Waldemar. All his Surinam qualifications
were rejected and he has had to
start from the bottom up, so it’s not surprising
that he responds to Rika’s warmth. The
feeling is mutual.
A fragile, romantic relationship develops,
blessed by a baby boy, whom they call
‘Sonny Boy’ after a song in a film they both
saw. They have a hard time keeping everything
together but, when they open a new
pension in Scheveningen some years later,
everything seem to be on track. But it is May
1940, and German airplanes fill the skies…
They have to leave their pension and are
finally able to find another one, taking Sonny
Boy along. Then, they are forced to make
one of the toughest decisions in their life:
Kees Chardon, one of the leaders of the
Dutch resistance, asks them if they are ready
to hide some people from the Germans.
They decide to do so. But their life falls
apart again when they are betrayed and sent
to the camps, leaving Sonny Boy behind. He
stays in a hiding place in the country, dreaming
about the return of his parents….
Director’s statement
The film is a love story between two apparently
ordinary people: typical Dutch Rika,
mother of four children; and a coloured guy
from Surinam called Waldemar, who is 17
years younger.
But of course this wasn’t ordinary at all.
Rika would fit into this millennium easily
enough, but she was born more than a century
ago. She was a free spirit and allowed
no one to tell her what to do. She didn’t care
about moral conventions or petty neighbours.
Waldemar, too, was quite special. He
was loyal to Rika until she died, in spite of
the fact he was so much younger than her,
and became a father to their love child
Sonny Boy in an era when racism was normal,
and black men never mingled with
white women. Their love is stronger than all
moral and political forces - until the war
splits them apart.
The story is set between 1911 and 1945.
It’s a strong story - or, to use the words of
author Annejet van der Zijl, a “story that
wanted to be told”. The original novel (which
has been translated into many languages
and will be published in English by Faber &
Faber in 2009) moved thousands of readers
and the reviews were extraordinarily positive.
For a director, the challenge is the
same: the story needs to be filmed and I am
dedicated to transforming the book into a
film with real emotions, as befits this unusual
love affair.
Writer/director Maria Peters
Maria Peters graduated from the Dutch Film
Academy in 1983. In 1987, she formed
Shooting Star Filmcompany, along with
Hans Pos and Dave Schram.
Filmography as director
1995 De tasjesdief
1999 Kruimeltje
2002 Pietje Bell: De film
2003 Pietje Bell II: De jacht op de
tsarenkroon
2006 Afblijven

Director
Maria Peters
Producer
Hans Pos,
Dave Schram
Writer
Pieter van de Waterbeemd,
Maria Peters
Based on
the novel of the same name
by Annejet van der Zijl
Language
Dutch
Genre
Drama
Format
35mm
Running time
110 mins approx
Love conquers everything but death.
Target audience
25-85, similar to the audience
for Dutch feature Twin Sisters
Budget
€ 6,000,000
Cast
tbc
Filmography as writer
1995 De tasjesdief
1998 Een echte hond
1999 Kruimeltje
2002 Pietje Bell: De film
2003 Pietje Bell II: De jacht op de
tsarenkroon
2005 My Skateboard
2006 Afblijven
2007 Timboektoe
2008 Radeloos
Production company Shooting Star
Shooting Star Filmcompany was founded in
1987 by Hans Pos, Dave Schram and Maria
Peters. It is now one of the leading and most
successful independent production companies
in the Netherlands.
Titles include
1993 Daens (directed by Stijn Coninx;
nominated for Best Foreign
Language Film at the Oscars)
1995 De tasjesdief (written and directed
by Maria Peters; winner of the
Crystal Bear at Berlin)
1997 Left Luggage (directed by Jeroen
Krabbé; starring Isabella Rossellini,
Maximilian Schell, selected for Berlin)
1999 Kruimeltje (Little Crumb; written and
directed by Maria Peters; one of the
all-time Dutch box-office hits, with
more than 1,300,000 admissions;
Dutch entry for the Academy Awards)
2002 Pietje Bell (written and directed by
Maria Peters; another Dutch boxoffice
hit, with 850,000 admissions)
Bella Bettien (directed by Hans Pos)
2003 Pietje Bell 2 (written and directed by
Maria Peters; 700,000 admissions)
2006 Afblijven (written and directed by
Maria Peters; based on the novel by
Carry Slee; 450,000 admissions)
2007 Kapitein Rob (Captain Bob and the
Secret of Professor Lupardi;
directed by Hans Pos)
Timboektoe (written by Maria Peters;
directed by Dave Schram; 250,000
admissions)
2008 Radeloos (written by Maria Peters;
directed by Dave Schram; due for
release in October 2008)
Current status
Sonny Boy is budgeted at €6 million, 80% of
which is in place.
The film is backed by the Dutch Film
Fund, the Dutch Matching Fund, KRO TV
and the CoBo Fund; it also has some private
investors who are willing to support this
prestigious project. It has a very strong and
dedicated Dutch distributor in A-Film, which
plans to release it in December 2009 with
more than 100 prints.
Our target is to start shooting the film in
March 2009. At present, we’re looking for partners
to make up the final 20% of the budget.
Aims at the NPP
The main reason for attending the Netherlands
Production Platform is to find a dedicated
co-producer, who is willing to add both
his or her experience and passion as well as
bringing in the remaining financial support.
Contact
Hans Pos
Shooting Star Filmcompany BV
Prinsengracht 546
1017 KK Amsterdam
Netherlands
Tel: (31) 20 624 7272
info@shootingstar.nl
www.shootingstar.nl
NPP 2008 • 43

Index
English titles, original titles, directors,
producers and production companies
English titles
1-900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
The Bear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Corps diplomatique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
The Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Istanbul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
A Kronstadt Tale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Lonely Woman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Lourdes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Mother Hussein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Olga - Tomorrow I’ll Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Our Grand Despair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
The Pigsties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Playoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
The Runway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Seeing Chris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Shanghai-Belleville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Shocking Blue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
The Snow Queen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Sonny Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Original titles (where different)
06 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Bizim buyuk caresizligimiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Lumekuninganna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Olga - Morgen dans ik weer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Svinalängorna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Um-Hussein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Ursul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Directors
Mohamed Al-Daradji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Pernilla August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Tom Cairns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Dan Chisu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Mark de Cloe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Nadia Farès . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Hans Hylkema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
André van der Hout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Stefan Liberski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Ben van Lieshout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Maria Peters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Ian Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Marko Raat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Eran Riklis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Michaël R Roskam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Adri Schrover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Show-Chun Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Seyfi Teoman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Ferenc Török . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Dito Tsintsadze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
John Turturro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Producers
Wilant Boekelman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Guurtje Buddenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Helena Danielsson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Dimitri de Clercq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Hans Eijses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Tudor Giurgiu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Juliette Grandmont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Matthijs van Heijningen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
László Kántor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Thanassis Karathanos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Macdara Kelleher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Nadadja Kemper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Bart Van Langendonck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Jackie Larkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Koji Nelissen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Nadir Operli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Hans Pos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Patrick Quinet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Kaie-Ene Rääk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Samir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Michael Sharfshtein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Isabelle Jayne Stead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Rob Vermeulen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Bea de Visser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Gijs van de Westelaken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Jan van der Zanden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Production companies
Anotherfilm, Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Artémis Productions, Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Bulut Film, Turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Clandestine & Charivari Films, France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Column Film, Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Dschoint Ventschr, Switzerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Fastnet Films, Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
F-Seitse, Estonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Hepp Film, Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Holland Harbour Productions, Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Human Film, UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Ironworks, US . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Libra Film, Romania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Newgrange Pictures, Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Savage Film, Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Shooting Star Filmcompany, Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Sigma Pictures Productions, Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Topia Communications, Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Twenty Twenty Vision, Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Új Budapest Filmstúdió, Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Van Lieshout Filmproducties, Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Waterland Film, Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
44 • NPP 2008