Art house film, documentaries and festivals

Not only is popular film flourishing, young film makers are also making a name for themselves in the international art house film scene. Nanouk Leopold presented her dispassionate dramas Guernsey and Wolfsbergen at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals, and David Verbeek, a young Dutch director in his twenties, witnessed the premiere of his portrait of contemporaries living in a virtual world, R U there, in Cannes.

The Netherlands has a tradition of making good documentaries and in the past has brought forth such internationally renowned documentary makers as Joris Ivens, Bert Haanstra and Johan van der Keuken. Building on this tradition the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has positioned itself as one of the major specialist documentary film festivals in the world. Equally trend-setting is the International Film Festival Rotterdam that succeeds in attracting a large (and extremely dedicated) audience each year with artistic film productions from all four corners of the globe. The most important stage for Dutch film makers is the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht. Here the most prestigious awards within Dutch cinema are presented each year: the Golden Calves.