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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 38 movies from SNG Film (Studio Nieuwe Gronden)
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.
Aug 2020
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.
May 2017
A biography of Isabelle de Charrière and her friendship with Benjamin Constant.
Sep 1993
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.
Mar 2002
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.
Nov 2001
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?
Jan 2000
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.
Sep 1983
In this melancholic comedy we follow the successful young violinist Sacha as she travels by train from Paris to Amsterdam and three days later when she returns, bereft of many illusions yet purified within.
Dec 1992
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.
Jun 2025
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.
Sep 1997
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.
Sep 1995
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.
Dec 2000
In 1990s Amsterdam, Loe and Bob are in a relationship, but wanting different things. Loe is a singer who likes to party and who is also engaged in migrant support. Bob is a lawyer focused on his career. As the film progresses, the tensions in the relationship become exposed.
Nov 1993
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.
Oct 1996
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.
Dec 1995
An unlikely romance blossoms between an introspective, illiterate baker and a woman he met through dating ads.
Mar 1988
A chimney sweep’s daredevil antics are meant to keep a young woman from jumping off the roof. But does she really want to jump? Or does he maybe? A street sweeper is watching and passes the hat round for our hero. Or is he part of the act too?
Mar 1992
In a drought-struck region in India, suffering from climate change and a high suicide rate amongst farmers, a group of resilient women farmers, who recently lost their husbands, is coming together with a local psychologist to learn counselling and help others in grief.
Mar 2024
On the island Tiengemeten, thirteen miles south of Rotterdam as the crow flies, all roads come to a dead end. Behind the dykes is water and wilderness. Here, among these dykes on 1700 acres of fertile land, director Digna Sinke filmed from 1996 how Tiengemeten is intended to become a stretch of wild nature, as part of a conservation plan. This is easier said than done. Alternative land with living accommodations has to be provided for six farming families. This comes through for five, but not for Leen Vos. Sinke also filmed how project groups regularly come and take a look and call meetings. Tiengemeten will be divided into three sections: Wistfulness, Wilderness and Wealth. However, nobody knows how the plan will work out. The negotiators allow farmer Leen Vos to stay until 2007. Until that time, the project cannot be carried out. Sinke just keeps filming, in her restrained, observant style, devoted to the magnificent scenery.
Fien de la Mar (1898-1965) was a Dutch actress with exceptional allure and extraordinary talent. With this she celebrated many triumphs, but her life ultimately ended in tragedy.
Feb 2016