Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht

Cubes of cheese, slices of sausage, a piece of weak cake. Family members questioning your life choices, disapproving looks, one too many glasses of wine. For Nena (27) a typical family birthday. The whole family in a circle, waiting, silent.\r Three birthdays in a row, she takes her new partner Jip with her. Each time she is overwhelmed by a load of criticism from her mother, she will have to learn to deal with it.

The imaginative Bo (9) lives as the only child in a street full of extroverted adults, who think she is quiet. Her parents try to include her in the group, but Bo prefers to fill pages of crafts about the neighbors in her homemade 'humancyclopedia'. When another kid named Rups comes to live in the street for the first time, Bo tries to prove herself by putting her humancyclopedia aside and starting a friendship with her. In this way, she wants to prove to her judgmental neighbors that she is more than just quiet. 'Rups' is a film about the silent power of the introvert and the magic of fantasy.

Twelve-year-old Kai and his best friend Thomas are inseparable. Together they are everything, alone they are nothing. Until the first day of the new schoolyear, when a new girl is in their class that Thomas fancies. Short drama sees Kai frenetically trying to win back his pal. He gradually loses control and makes a choice that will determine the rest of his life.

Short coming of age film about friendship. To what extent can you be guided by desires without losing each other? Billie and Momo have a quirky friendship. During a scouting competition in the woods, they discover that they have different expectations of their relationship. This means the match will have a different outcome than they expected.

Siljan is a young writer who accidentally discovers that he is adopted. After a confrontation with his adoptive parents, he embarks on a search for his roots, a quest that leads him to his native Macedonia. What awaits him here is the last thing he expects.

James leads a lonely life in a luxurious castle in which his parents run a hotel. He never goes out with friends, spends his spare time in his room and peeks at the hotel's guests out of boredom and curiosity. Chased by his controlling mother, who only wants him to finish his homework, James is more interested in the group of handsome Swedish soccer players staying at the hotel. When he finds one of the boys injured at the hotel's swimming pool, James offers his help and smuggles the boy into his room and locks the door. Locked up with a strange boy in his own room, James experiences the complexity of his own sexual feelings for the first time.

Eighteen-year-old student Isra embarks on a final weekend trip to one of the Wadden Islands with her depressed father. She has just received the news that she will be able to move into a student room. While she feels relief, she is also anxious about sharing the news with her father and leaving him alone with his depression. She hopes to see him happy during this last weekend together, so she can move out without worrying about him. However, when Isra shares her plans, it takes them both time to grasp what this change means. Amid feelings of guilt and fear, they search for a new way to redefine their relationship. Eventually, Isra realises that letting go might be as much an act of loving, as staying.

The blue depths of the swimming pool is her home. Keesje is a passionate synchronised swimmer, and the big competition is just around the corner. However, when a fight erupts between the girls during the final rehearsal, everything changes.

The Ysbreeker family -- mother Jolien, father Frank, daughter Roos and son Teun -- are enjoying their annual holiday on a camping site in France. Teun is at the beginning of his puberty and can't quite control his hormones. Roos, a teen girl in the middle of her puberty, is more interested in her first camping love than in her own family. Teun notices that his sister is becoming a woman, in all different ways. How does he react? Does it have any influence on the brother-sister relationship?

Short animation by Gerrit van Dijk

53-year-old Barbara is on holiday in Ibiza when she is unexpectedly confronted with a world that is not designed for singles, making her feel personally and financially disadvantaged by her environment. What should have been a relaxing holiday quickly turns into a week of Barbara struggling to be happily alone.

In the shadow of the feared 'millennium bug', a Surinamese family navigates New Year's Eve 1999, discovering that facing their fears and having difficult conversations leads to new beginnings, rather than the end of the world.

Filmmaker Emma Boelhouwer has no affinity whatsoever with darts. Until she is zapping on TV one night and ends up in the middle of a nerve-racking darts game. She is seized by the look on the face of the young, still unknown darter Michael van Gerwen and knows right away: this fellow from Noord-Brabant will become a star. She rushes headlong - with her camera - into a world that is completely new to her.

On a sunny spring day, three women all going by the name Svetlana, wait at a train station somewhere in Southern Serbia.

Open Surgery is a short animation film about an open heart surgery where death comes to play his part. The animation was made as the second year student film (2008) of my study, 3D computer animation and visual effects, at Utrecht School of the Arts.