SNG Film (Studio Nieuwe Gronden)

Incredible optical illusions in a story in a story in a story helps the surprised viewer finally to find out that he has been watching himself all along.

A young couple employed by a pet crematorium finds fulfilment in respectfully removing cadavers. Their love blossoms in an environment where the boundaries between human and animal are fading. When they hit a stray dog, their relationship starts to derail.

The parents of five sisters have been married for forty years; the daughters have gathered in the family beach house to make a video for them. The encounter is marked by many confrontations as well as cheerful moments. Reminiscent of the sweet children's poems that mother recited are countered by Elsschot's Marriage: 'He thought: I'll kill her and set light to the house...' It also turns out that father had once disappeared for eighteen months, a 'secret' that the daughters have different ideas about. Brittle, an intimate film version of a play written and performed by the same actresses, is about rivalry in a family, the right to silence, but also about the need for solidarity. At the Netherlands Film Festival in 1997 the Golden Calf for Best Actress was awarded to the five actresses together.

In The State of the Grass, the battle that people are waging with their lawn is portrayed. We see that battle through the eyes of a hedgehog and a magpie. The magpie will mainly observe the people from above or from a distance and the hedgehog, on the other hand, sits close to it, scurrying through the plants. The people who will be observed are everyday people who want to have a perfect lawn. They constantly have to overcome new obstacles in their search for the perfect grass. Through the eyes of the magpie and the hedgehog we experience their frustrations. But also the passion that people feel or the satisfaction when they have solved a problem.

The story about Jan visiting his grandfather for the last time during the summer in a little village in Drenthe. Thanks to Jan, his grandfather decides to do what he never dared during his entire life. Jan, as an outsider, is some sort of spectator of the life in the village, although he is also involved in that life.

In the TV film Polonaise, traffic jams have grown into a phenomenon in which traffic jam call girls, hairdressers and photographers enliven the endless delays. The film follows a number of people in a jam on the A5. The central character is a Pole in an expensive Saab Convertible, who is wanted by the police. A red Panda carries the heavily pregnant Hilde and her cynical sister. Hilde is worried because she has not seen her friend anymore after a quarrel. In an old Saab, a young couple is bickering. She is a `yuppie cunt' who stakes her marriage for a parking licence and is tired of her husband smoking dope. Charlie the music promoter is driving his son's car. He likes traffic jams, because they allow him to settle his deals undisturbed and meet his secret love, the traffic jam call girl Nena. While the characters are confronted with each other and themselves more and more, tension rises to a peak. A radio pirate connects the story lines with his chatter.

On a train crossing Tanzania, a rolling microcosm of East African society, we follow three main characters, reflecting on the strength to survive.

A biography of Isabelle de Charrière and her friendship with Benjamin Constant.

Tragicomedy about two brothers who married two sisters, walking the streets of Deventer at night lamenting the fact that each should have married the other one's wife.

An unlikely romance blossoms between an introspective, illiterate baker and a woman he met through dating ads.

The highway in the Netherlands has a total length of almost 2500 kilometres. There is almost no other country with such an enormous highway density. In this documentary the monumentality, but also the apparent everydayness of our highway is shown. The highway is actually a poorly known arena for a wide range of activities. What does this monumental and almost perfect network say about us?

How do you deal with the fact that someone close to heart has suddenly disappeared without a trace? Can you go on living whilst waiting for his return?

A widowed Latvian father's quest for a much-loved Dutch pen pal, whom he hasn't heard from in three decades, provides the basis of this comedy-drama. The father is accompanied by his traumatized and mute eight-year-old son whom he had to kidnap from a Riga hospital. Together, the two flee towards Holland where the father Yuris hopes to find his long-lost friend Marie, whom he remembers as a great beauty. During the long journey, father and son have several funny adventures, many of which occur because neither father nor son speak much Dutch. They finally arrive at Marie's door empty-handed. What they find, gives them little hope, for the lithe young idealist of Yuris' dreams has become middle-aged and cynical.

A Flemish family comes together in their maternal home. Oscar, the grotesque patriarch, his bedridden wife Magda, his feeble son Johnny and his daughter Julia, who's married to a Moroccan soccer player. There's something wrong with Magda, who's not only plagued by her physical decay, but also by visions of her dead sister Marleen.

The successful photographer Diane is in Rome for a photo assignment, but seems mostly to be looking for Giovanni, an old acquaintance and probably a lover. Against the backdrop of the political situation, which is strained due to the attacks by the Red Brigades, Diane and Giovanni hopelessly pass each other by.

A man is travelling on a long haul express train journey from Amsterdam to Paris. He shares his sleeper compartment with another man who he engages in conversation. He learns that the man is a cannibal who intends to kill and eat him. The man is unsure of where his life is going and begins to be swayed by the cannibal's assertions that being eaten would give his life meaning and purpose. However, how long can the man stall for, with questions on the finer points of eating someone?

From the filmmaker's perspective, we follow the process of a possible feature film about a photographer (Lea) tasked with capturing the energy transition in Amsterdam's harbor area. This brings up a flood of memories and associations. What do you do with what hasn't gone well in your life? How well can you know someone dear to you? Filmmaker and character turn out to coincide more and more during the process.

Wistful Wilderness

Homer and Joé trace the rivers of Croatia aboard a small boat. In spite of being fifty years old each one, none of them knew of the existence of the other until the recent death of the father of both. Now, however, they are half brothers. During the voyage, they meet Sean, an enigmatic Irish adventurer who will join them on the journey.