Netherlands

Screen version of Antoon Coolen’s regional novel about a strong headed village doctor.

In around 1900 Tjerk van Taeke sets up a medical practice in a small village in the southern province of Brabant. The local poor appreciate his help but the village worthies won’t have anything to do with him. The doctor befriends a poacher who tells him colourful stories about the village and its inhabitants and so introduces him to the real Brabant. When van Taeke’s wife dies, however, he feels there is nothing left to keep him there and he leaves.

Social drama around a street urchin who kills his mother in a fit of anger.

Ciske de Rat brought the first two instalments of Piet Bakker’s famous trilogy about Amsterdam street urchin Ciske Vrijmoet to the screen.

Ciske’s father is at sea and his cruel mother neglects him. The only people who care about what happens to him are schoolmaster Bruis and his father’s new girlfriend aunt Jans. When Ciske accidentally kills his mother by throwing a knife at her in a fit of anger, he is sent to reform school. It looks as if he will be marked for life.

English-Swedish-Dutch crime film about a lone champion of justice.

Psychological thriller about a man who loses his memory.

A young man is found roaming the streets. He suffers from amnesia and is taken to a psychiatric hospital. The police think he may be involved in a murder. Slowly the man regains his memory and a plot is revealed in which he seems to be both perpetrator and victim.

‘Age is not better, hardly as well qualified to be an instructor of youth, for it has not profited as much as it has lost.’ With these words by Thoreau, Nikolai van der Heyde ends his fascinating film about a Dutch boy and an American girl who try to live their own lives in the narrow-minded province of Friesland of the 1920s.

Propaganda feature film commissioned by the Algemeene Nederlandsche Zuivelbond (the Duch dairy association).

A farmer and his son cannot agree on whether or not they should join a dairy cooperative. The farmer’s earlier experiences make him sceptical and when his son falls in love with the daughter of the cooperative’s foreman, they fall out. In the end the old farmer gives in. The son joins the cooperative. His father’s conclusion is that it’s his son’s turn now and he should do what he thinks is best.

A funny feature film by Wim Verstappen with a moral, but little pretension.

However, there is a touch of feminism to the story of a young, married woman who, on a sudden impulse, leaves her home and family - a husband and two children - because she feels the need to prove herself somewhere and in some way. The film mainly depicts the male reactions to this impudent female ‘escape attempt’, which, according to Western morals, naturally has to fail without anyone getting really hurt.