The first edition of NLWave, an initiative of the Netherlands Film Fund and run in collaboration with SEE NL and Eye Filmmuseum, takes place September 24 to 26 in Utrecht, on the eve of the Netherlands Film Festival. The aim of the event is to spotlight new and upcoming Dutch feature-length films, documentaries and animation.
The line-up reflects “fresh, bold storytelling from the Netherlands featuring both new voices and established directors,” write organisers. “This is a showcase platform designed to introduce these titles to international professionals at an early stage, and at the same time creating opportunities for direct interaction between the industry professionals and the filmmakers.”
Nine new documentary titles are selected, six of which are new project pitches, three works-in-progress and three completed works.
NLWAVE25 DOCUMENTARY PROJECT PITCHES
IDFA winner Luuk Bouwman’s new project The Eighth Continent, produced by Amsterdam-based Scenery and co-directed with Tomas Kaan, deals with the race towards the colonization and exploitation of the Moon and its precious resources. Bouwman won the Best Dutch Documentary Award at IDFA in 2024 for The Propagandist.
Robert-Jonathan Koeyers’ intriguing Little Lost Things, produced by Valk Productions, sees the filmmaker return with his family members to the locations they visited in 2018 to fill the collective gaps and memories they lost when their hard disk was irreparably damaged.
Marjolein Busstra’s House of Hope, produced by Dutch powerhouse 100% (formerly known as Halal), concerns an elementary school tin the heart of the West bank that embraces non-violence and supports children in healing from trauma.
Mint Film Office’s Through the Eye of the Falcon, directed by Sakir Khader, is a raw and intimate family epic in which Khader explores how the occupation of Palestine, and the physical and psychological violence inextricably linked to it, has been drawing and disrupting his family for decades – both in Palestine and in the Netherlands.
NLWAVE25 DOCUMENTARY WORKS-IN-PROGRESS
Palm Springs/Aspen winner Miriam Guttmann attends NLWave25 with Sanda Dia, which tells the highly disturbing tale of a black man who dies during an initiation ceremony at an elite Belgian university. The film offers a critique of systemic privilege, power and social injustice as well assessing as the devastating consequences of toxic traditions, race and class (in)justice and lack of accountability in Belgium – and beyond.
Tom Fassaert, who won the Special Jury Award Dutch Competition at IDFA 2015 with A Family Affair) will be pitching his work-in-progress In Your Shadow, co-directed with Thabi Mooi and produced by Een van de jongens. In the project, when Thabi takes her estranged father on a journey to reconstruct his hidden past as an ANC freedom fighter, she discovers that there’s more to his lifelong silence than only his trauma.
Another Een van de Jongens work-in-progress is Menno Otten’s Still City. The synopsis reads: A day, four seasons and 100 years in Amsterdam, crafted from found footage. The film delves into the city and its inhabitants, uniting them through mutual experiences and moments. As the narrative unfolds, the changing seasons deeply influence their lives, elevating the human experience as the centrepiece.
The fourth WIP is Louis Hothothot’s Big Dreams, produced by Witfilm, in which the director follows an American girl who weighs nearly 250 kg and dreams of becoming an actor in Beijing. Hothothot’s Four Journeys opened IDFA in 2021.
NLWAVE25 SCREENINGS
Tom Fassaert will also present his eagerly awaited, and newly completed, feature Between Brothers, again produced by Een van de jongens. The film is described as an intimate documentary about two elderly brothers who are wrestling with their unsolved past. A tragicomic story about the conflict between chaos and order, madness and normality, loyalty and autonomy.
In Club Heaven by Jona Honer (produced by Submarine Productions), a unique ritual unfolds around money and status within a nightclub. Could materialism offer a new form of meaning and connection?
Meanwhile in Paikar by Dawood Hilmandi (Baldr Film), years after he ran away from home as a boy to find freedom in the ‘West’, an Afghan-Dutch filmmaker goes back to challenge himself and his authoritarian father, and to question him about the notion of freedom.
Business Doc Europe will be reporting on all of the above projects and completed films throughout NLWave 25.
