Cinema of the Netherlands

The Documentary film of the Netherlands has long been renowned worldwide. The most prominent Dutch directors, especially those who started their careers before World War II, came from a documentary background, for instance Joris Ivens and Bert Haanstra. Since the early 1970s, however, documentary production aimed at a theatrical release has declined, perhaps due to a shift towards television documentary.

In the years directly following the war, most effort was given to the reconstruction of the country; film was not a priority. In the late 1950s the Dutch film industry professionalized. The Nederlands Filmfonds (Netherlands Film Fund) was established in 1957, the Nederlandse Filmacademie (Netherlands Film Academy) in 1958. Documentary filmer Bert Haanstra made his first fiction film, Fanfare, in 1958. Even though the film was a big success, this success was only incidental. Dutch cinema did temporarily provide a sound of its own in this period, in the form of what is now considered to be the "Dutch documentary tradition" or "Dutch documentary school". Headed by Haanstra, who won an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject with 1959's Glass and also won prizes in Berlin and Cannes, the movement also included Herman van der Horst, who won a Golden Bear for Best Documentary and John Fernhout, whose Sky Over Holland won a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject in 1968.

Documentaries still play an important part in Dutch film industry. The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, held annually in November, is considered one of the largest documentary film festivals in the world. Famous documentary directors pre- and postdating the unofficial Documentary School include Joris Ivens, Johan van der Keuken and Jos de Putter. Ivens won a César Award and a Golden Lion, as well as a career achievement award at the Venice Film Festival. Jos de Putter is now head of the Documentary film department of the VPRO, one of the main Dutch public television stations.

Although Haanstra continued to make internationally acclaimed documentaries, the "school" more or less faded out by the late sixties. By this time, the first generation of Dutch filmmakers who graduated from the Dutch Film Academy began to make a name for themselves. The most famous director of this era is undoubtedly Fons Rademakers, who received domestic and international critical claim with a number of films between 1959 and 1963. Rademakers learned the business from Vittorio De Sica and Jean Renoir and brought his newfound knowledge of foreign art films with him. Contemporaries include Academy-laureates Frans Weisz, Pieter Verhoeff and Frans Bromet, another documentary maker. Slowly, fiction films become more and more popular in the Netherlands.

A more lasting success for Dutch film came in the 1970s, mostly under the influence of one man: Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven's five films of the decade – Business Is Business (Wat zien ik?, 1971), Turkish Delight (Turks Fruit, 1973), Katie Tippel (Keetje Tippel, 1975), Soldier of Orange (Soldaat van Oranje, 1977) and Spetters (1980) – were box-office hits; they are still in the top-twenty most successful Dutch films ever. Turkish Delight and Soldier of Orange were successful abroad as well and eventually led to Verhoeven's Hollywood career. In 2006 Verhoeven returned to his own language and made Black Book (Zwartboek), his first Dutch spoken film since The Fourth Man (1983).

Other successful directors from this era are Wim Verstappen and Pim de la Parra, whose movies were more commercial than those of their colleagues in the 1960s. In his book Van Fanfare tot Spetters, film historian Hans Schoots argues that the flourishing period of Dutch film lies between these two films, ending with the controversial Spetters, after which the happy era that was the seventies was over, and a more down-to-earth approach to filmmaking kicked in. Indeed, after 1980, few Dutch films managed to bring crowds of millions to the cinemas, partly due to a decline in interest, partly due to home video systems which resulted in an overall drop in cinema attendance in the Netherlands.

More consistently successful, especially at the box office, are children's novels adaptations. Modern Dutch family movies follow in the tradition of Henk van der Linden – who made 38 youth films between 1952 and 1984 – and Karst van der Meulen who made twelve of them in the seventies and eighties. 1998's Abeltje and 1999's Kruimeltje were the highest grossing domestic films of these years. Minoes (2001), Pietje Bell (2002), De Schippers van de Kameleon (2002), Pluk van de Petteflet (2004) and De Kameleon 2 (2005) achieved the same in their respective years. The Dutch children's films also got some international critical claim. For instance, Het Paard van Sinterklaas won awards at six foreign film festivals. This prompted producers to make an internationally oriented, big budget (approximately €12 million) family film, Crusade in Jeans. While a Dutch production, the film had an international cast and was shot in English.

The family oriented films' reign at the top of the domestic box office came to an end in 2006 with Paul Verhoeven's war thriller Black Book, which was the first Dutch film since Kruimeltje to get over a million admissions. Black Book was the most expensive Dutch film production of all time, with a reported budget of just under €18 million. The success was bested only one year later, with the romantic comedy Alles is Liefde.

A decline in cinema admission set in after the 1970s. Director Dick Maas, making studio-style action-thrillers such as De Lift (1983) and Amsterdamned (1988), was about the only filmmaker having mainstream success in this period. He topped the box office charts with his dysfunctional family comedy Flodder (1986) and its sequel Flodder in Amerika (1992), the latter getting nearly one and a half million admissions, making it the most successful Dutch film since the introduction of the VCR. Some more artistic directors, such as Jos Stelling, Orlow Seunke and Alex van Warmerdam made magic realism movies. Other auteur-directors emerged during this era as well, including Theo van Gogh, Ate de Jong and more recently Cyrus Frisch. In this decade, acclaimed director Fons Rademakers won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film with 1986's The Assault.

The cinematic adaptation of the novel, For a Lost Soldier, starring Maartin Smit and Canadian actor Andrew Kelley, was released in 1992 and has sparked controversy for its portrayal of a relationship between an adult male soldier and an 11-year old boy.

In the mid-1990s, the Dutch government introduced tax shelters (the so-called 'CV-regeling') to encourage private investments in Dutch films. After implementation of these new rules there was a boom in production of Dutch movies. It was not the movies made through the tax shelter however, but rather movies aimed at a young audience, such as Costa! (2001), that won back the confidence in the commercial viability of Dutch film. Costa! is about Dutch teenagers vacationing at the Spanish coast. The success of the film spawned several copycat films (for instance Volle Maan (Full Moon Party; 2002)) and a spin-off sitcom (also called Costa!), which ran for several seasons on the public broadcasting network BNN.

After a while the formula wore down and the new commercial flavor became films with a multicultural feel. Hush Hush Baby (Shouf Shouf Habibi, 2004) and Schnitzel Paradise (Het Schnitzelparadijs, 2005) were both comedies featuring Dutch/Moroccan actors and became a commercial success. The difference with Volle Maan is that the films were also acclaimed by critics (both in the Netherlands as internationally) and both films were shown at the Berlin Film Festival.

In 2015, 1572: The Battle of Harlem, was released and is currently available for free streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The film tells the true story of a women-led rebellion against the forces of Spanish King Philip II during the Eighty Years' War.

In the 1980s and 1990s few other Dutch actors had the international success of Hauer and Krabbé. Their contemporaries Monique van de Ven, Derek de Lint, Renée Soutendijk and Huub Stapel all returned to making Dutch films when their Hollywood-efforts proved disappointing. Actress Van de Ven of Turkish Delight-fame moved to the US with her then-husband Jan de Bont and appeared in a number of small American films, to no significant success. De Lint's booked guest appearances in various TV shows like NYPD Blue and The L Word, and a number of supporting roles in theatrical movies, of which the most prominent was The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). Soutendijk played the female lead in Eve of Destruction (1991) and Huub Stapel, star of all of Dick Maas' box office hits, had a supporting role in a 1988 TV-movie about Anne Frank.

In 1992, the coming-of-age romantic drama film, Voor een Vorloren Soldaat, starring Krabbé and Maarten Smit was released.

In the early 2000s actor Antonie Kamerling played in the American independent film Five Fingers in which, ironically, American actor Ryan Phillippe plays the leading Dutch character. Kamerling also had a supporting part in Exorcist: The Beginning. Actrice Thekla Reuten, star of Oscar-nominated Twin Sisters, made her US-debut in Highlander: The Source. Films like In Bruges, In Transit and The American soon followed. She also had a supporting role in Season 2 of Sleeper Cell and a small role in Lost.

As the decade progressed, actor Yorick van Wageningen made a name for himself by appearing in Beyond Borders (2003), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) and The New World (2005). These films were to be preceded by a supporting role in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report but due to problems with his visa, he was unable to work on that movie. Contrary to most other Dutch actors successful in Hollywood, Van Wageningen was not a major star in his own country before playing in American films. Likewise, Saskia Mulder (sister to model Karen Mulder) made her debut abroad appearing in French and English films and television series. She had roles in The Beach, The Descent and The Descent: Part 2. She also was a series regular in the Scottish sitcom The Book Group.

In early 2010 a new wave of film talent made its way to international success. Talents to emerge during the decade included Marwan Kenzari, Lotte Verbeek, Sylvia Hoeks and Michiel Huisman.

Soon after Kenzari made his breakthrough in the Dutch film Wolf he made his US debut in the film Collide with Anthony Hopkins. Films like Ben-Hur, The Mummy and Murder on the Orient Express soon followed. In 2017 it was announced that Kenzari would play the villain Jafar in Disney's live-action adaptation of Aladdin.[13][14] Lotte Verbeek booked success playing in international television shows like The Borgias, Outlander, The Blacklist and Marvel's Agent Carter.[15][16] She also had a role in movie The Last Witch Hunter alongside Vin Diesel.[17] In the early 2010s Sylvia Hoeks played in the films The Girl and Death and The Best Offer. And in 2017 Hoeks was cast the replicant Luv in the science fiction film Blade Runner 2049.[18][19] Michiel Huisman appeared in The Young Victoria, World War Z and The Age of Adaline. From 2014 till 2016 he played the role of Daario Naharis on Game of Thrones.

In 2013 Alex van Warmerdam's film Borgman premiered In-Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. With this he became the second Dutch director ever to be nominated for the Palme d'Or.

Behind the scenes, cameraman Theo van de Sande, born in Tilburg, has made an impressive CV filming big budget films, having shot films such as Cruel Intentions and Blade, after he previously had a worthy career in his native country. Other Dutch individuals with international credits include Hollywood sound designer Charles Deenen; Oscar-winning director Marleen Gorris who made a number of international productions including the 1997 adaptation of Mrs Dalloway and currently works on several British productions; DJ and composer Junkie XL who wrote additional music for Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven and scored the action film DOA: Dead or Alive; Sylvia Kristel, most famous for her role as Emmanuelle in a series of softcore movies, also appeared in a large number of lesser known American (TV-)movies, of which The Nude Bomb, a feature film adaptation of the TV-series Get Smart is probably the most notable. Kristel briefly appears as Agent 34; an established cinematographer in the alternative film scene, Curaçao-born Robby Müller has repeatedly worked with Wim Wenders, Lars von Trier and Jim Jarmusch; a director at the start of his career, Kees van Oostrum has moved to US to become a prolific cinematographer on various TV-movies and miniseries; two-time Academy Awards nominated production designer Jan Roelfs, who worked with Andrew Niccol and Oliver Stone; George Sluizer, who made an American remake of his popular cult hit Spoorloos and currently works mostly on pan-European co-productions, will make a US-comeback with the Rob Schneider-comedy The Chosen One (2009); cameraman Rogier Stoffers, who shot a number of US box office hits in the 2000s, most notably Disturbia; tall man Carel Struycken, whose physique landed him the parts of Lurch in Barry Sonnenfeld's The Addams Family films and The Giant in Twin Peaks; Jany Temime was costume designer on the last three Harry Potter films, In Bruges and Children of Men; Arjen Tuiten, a special make-up effects artist working for the Stan Winston Studio, with Pan's Labyrinth as one of his prominent credits; Dutch born costume designer Elsa Zamparelli, who received an Oscar nomination for Dances with Wolves.

In 2016, Martin Koolhoven directed Brimstone, his first international film (with international stars). The dark and violent western/thriller was first shown in competition at the Venice Film Festival and was very well received in Europe, yet got mixed reviews in The United States. Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn made his film debut directing the British biopic Control about Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis.

• Hany Abu-Assad, Two time Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film-nominee. Born in Israel, Dutch/Palestinian
• Jan de Bont, Cinematographer turned director
• Anton Corbijn, Photographer turned director
• Mike van Diem, Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film-winner
• Theo van Gogh, director
• Marleen Gorris, Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film-winner
• Bert Haanstra, Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject-winner
• Joris Ivens, influential documentary-maker
• Martin Koolhoven, contemporary auteur director, commercially and artistically successful in many genres
• Pieter Kuijpers, contemporary director, most successful in the crime/thriller genre
• Nanouk Leopold, contemporary arthouse director
• Joram Lürsen, director of recent mainstream movies
• Dick Maas, director of local blockbusters in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Fons Rademakers, Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film-winner
• Jos Stelling, director of stylized movies
• Eddy Terstall, auteur director of dialogue-driven low-budget comedies
• Jean van de Velde, director of mainstream films
• Paul Verhoeven, successful and often controversial director, who also worked in Hollywood
• Alex van Warmerdam, auteur director of absurdist comedies, Palme d'Or nominee
• Cyrus Frisch, writer-director