Dutch films going strong at local box-office
by Boyd van Hoeij - europeanfilms.net
Dutch cinema seems to be on the upswing with the release of the culture clash comedy Het schnitzelparadijs [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Martin Khoolhoven
interview: Mimoun Oaïssa
film profile] (Schnitzel paradise) from former arthouse director Martin Koolhoven (Het Zuiden). Produced by Lemming Film and released by Independent Nederland, the film had an incredible opening weekend two weekends ago with more than 50,000 tickets sold and a gross of almost 332,000 euros. Incidentally, this is more than the total
box-office of all of Koolhoven's previous films combined. For its second weekend, the most visited film of the Netherlands added
another 7 screens for a total of 57 and registered a slight increase in visitors rather than the habitual drop-off. The total gross after two weeks stands at almost 800,000 euro. As is habit in the Netherlands, the film will be awarded the Golden Film by the Dutch Film Festival and the Dutch Film Fund for having surpassed the 100,000 visitors threshold. Het schnitzelparadijs will now be squarely aiming for the Platinum Film title, for which it needs to have sold a total of 400,000 tickets.
Het Schnitzelparadijs is a broad comedy about a second generation Moroccan boy called Nordip (newcomer Mounir Valentyn), who works in a restaurant as a dishwasher. The kitchen there is a micro-cosmos of the Dutch multicultural society, with Nordip trying to make sense of it all but especially the cute waitress Agnes, who will one day inherit the restaurant. The film comes in the wake of Shouf Shouf Habibi !, another broad culture clash comedy that was the most visited Dutch film of last year, with a total gross of over 2.3 million euro.
The current top 20 of the Dutch box-office contains a healthy three other Dutch productions; two of which are aimed at children: Zoop in Afrika (based on the TV series of the same name) has made almost 2 million after 10 weeks in release and the sequel De Kameleon 2 has accumulated almost 2.2 million since its debut 12 weeks ago. The last Dutch film in the top 20 is the Cannes-entry Guernsey [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which has made over 55,000 euro after four weeks in limited release.
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