15/01/2024 - The Dutch film agency has granted its support to the new works by the likes of Eddy Terstall, Frank van Passel and Johan Nijenhuis

Director Frank van Passel, who has received €589,427 for Foley Man (© Frank van Passel/wikiportret.nl)

Last week, the Netherlands Film Fund announced the beneficiaries of its fourth 2023 round of funding for its Film Production Incentive scheme. On this occasion, the Dutch agency has earmarked a total of €6.7 million to back 13 new projects – six fiction features, one documentary feature, one animated flick, two drama series, one documentary series and two animated series, including six international co-productions. These contributions are estimated to generate over €23.6 million in production spend in the Netherlands.

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The grant of the biggest magnitude (€1,007,358) went to Eddy Terstall’s fiction feature Johan’s Country, penned by the director himself together with Erik Wünsch and staged by Amsterdam-based Witfilm. The picture follows three families, one from Limburg, one from the Veluwe and one from Morocco. Their lives intermingle in vibrant Amsterdam from 1966 to the present day. They influence each other’s lives, and close friendships and romantic relationships develop. The film is set “against the backdrop of an ever-changing and increasingly colourful Netherlands”.

The other five fiction features benefiting from the incentive are Frank van Passel’s Foley Man (€589,427, spearheaded by Mechelen-based Lompvis, and co-produced by Beluga Tree in Belgium and sunny pictures in the Netherlands), David Cocheret’s Full Moon (€297,249, an NL Film & TV presentation), Sven Bresser’s Reedland (€580,483, produced by Dutch outfit Viking Film with Belgium’s A Private View), Johan Nijenhuis’ Rokjesnacht (€352,835, a Lemming Film production) and Michael Middelkoop’s Streetcoaches vs Aliens (€710,880, also produced by Lemming Film).

Next, the three series being backed by the agency are Joram Lürsen’s medical drama Day and Night 2 (€598,504, produced by Dutch studio Lemming Film with its Belgian division and the UK’s Magical Society), Sacha Vermeulen and Ivan Barbosa’s six-part documentary Hiphop Made in NL (€241,897, produced by Scenery in the Netherlands) and Lourens Blok’s World War II-set Firework (€970,592, staged by undisclosed producers).

The only documentary feature backed by the fund is The Fifth Journey by Louis Hothothot (€89,162). Produced by Pieter van Huystee Film & TV, the doc’s official synopsis, penned by the helmer, reads as follows: “My father was dying; I flew back to China, but I was forced to quarantine for 28 days, so I missed my father's funeral. My mother decided to move out of the family apartment in Beijing and live in my father’s home village so that she could take care of him.”

Finally, the three animated projects in receipt of the incentive are Joost van den Bosch and Erik Verkerk’s feature A New Friend for Tummy Tom (€307,972, a co-production between Belgium’s Eyeworks Film & TV Drama and Dutch outfit Bos Bros), Anneke de Graaf’s series Little Charlie (€541,189, led by Germany’s Alexandra Schatz Film Produktion and co-produced by Dutch firm Submarine Animation) and Bouwine Pool’s series Pol the Pirate Mouse (€416,439, also produced by Submarine Animation with Portugal’s Animanostra).