Golden Calves nominations announced

by Boyd van Hoeij

29/09/2011 - The nominees for the Dutch National Film Awards, the Golden Calves, were announced earlier this week. Front-runners are The Gang of Oss (pictured) and Brownian Movement, with six nominations each.

The Golden Calves nominations and the awards ceremony are traditionally part of the Netherlands Film Festival, currently under way in the central city of Utrecht, and is a showcase for both new local films and productions of the past year. New titles that have premiered there include Ben Sombogaart’s Isabelle [trailer] and the aforementioned The Gang of Oss, which opened the festival on September 21.

Brownian Movement [trailer] premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and tells the story of a woman (German actress Sandra Hüller, speaking English and French) in Brussels who randomly sleeps with men despite being in an apparently happy marriage. The arthouse film was nominated in several major categories, including Best Film and Best Direction and Screenplay, the latter two both by Nanouk Leopold..

Another English-language arthouse drama, the South Africa-set poetess biopic Black Butterflies [trailer], was also nominated for Best Film and Best Director, and further scored nominations for Best Actress for multiple nominee and past winner Carice van Houten and Best Editing.

The third and last Best Film nominee is something of a surprise: Rabat [trailer], the first film from directorial duo Jim Taihuttu and Victor Ponten. The road movie, about three young men of Maghrebi origins who take a road trip from the Netherlands to Morocco, also landed nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Actor for Nasrdin Dchar. Interestingly, this means that the Best Film field contains very little dialogue in Dutch, as Rabat is partially in Berber and Arabic.

Despite having received six nominations, The Gang of Oss missed out on all the big categories except for Best Screenplay, by director André van Duren and co-writer Paul Jan Nelissen. Its absence in the Best Actress race is especially strange, since star Sylvia Hoek had been receiving positive notices for her starring role in the period gangster drama.

Director Will Koopman received a Best Director nomination for her enormous box-office hit Vipers' Nest, though the film missed out in all other categories except for the Best Supporting Actress and Actor categories.

The awards will be handed out this weekend.