Nikolai van der Heyde

Biography

Nikolai van der Heyde is a Dutch filmmaker. Van der Heyde attended the Film Academy, where he worked with Wim Verstappen (Een drup op de tong), among others. His first film, made under the auspices of the NFTVA (Dutch film academy), was De kegelbaan. That same year he established the film magazine Skoop with Verstappen and Pim de la Parra. For the first issue, Van der Heyde wrote the opening article, 'De kritiek is ziek' ('Criticism is sick'). In it, he judges Dutch film critics, who were, according to him, so hopelessly behind in their understanding of the times that they disqualified themselves from being taken seriously. The article makes it clear that Van der Heyde felt an affinity for the French nouvelle vague, although he resisted the easy way in which every new film was grouped under that title.

Van der Heyde's first feature film, Een ochtend van zes weken, is clearly influenced by French cinema. The film was received with unprecedented enthusiasm, which meant that Van der Heyde's next feature films had to contend with unrealistically high expectations. The critics were divided about To Grab the Ring and Angela - 'Love comes quietly…'. In the meantime, Van der Heyde was working on a film with a different approach; Help, de dokter verzuipt was light fare without artistic pretentions and it gradually became a box-office hit. Over the next years, Van der Heyde continued to make comedies occasionally, including Sherlock Jones, but these were not as well attended. Nitwits! was his first feature film in seven years. It received merciless reviews and Van der Heyde has not made any films since then.