The 21st edition of the Dutch Film Festival has ended with awards both for high profile tax scheme funded titles, and low-budget debuts. Holland's private investors can congratulate themselves on increasing budgets - and quality - for titles like the Frisian biopic Nynke, already a box office hit, and the literary adaptation The Cave.

Awards for Best Film and Best Actress (Monic Hendrickx) went to Nynke, while director Martin van Koolhoven picked up a Golden Calf for The Cave.

Two films from the low budget series: No More Heroes, also won awards: best script went to Lodewijk Crijns and Kim van Kooten for With Great Joy while actor Fedja van Huet was awarded for his role in AmnesiA.

There were also other reasons to celebrate - Oysters of Nam Kee, the first Dutch-German co-production signed under the agreement between the Dutch Film Fund and the German Filmstiftung NRW, which was created in Utrecht two years ago, was announced at The Holland Film Meeting.

The treaty allows Dutch or German producers to spend 50% of the budget in their own countries and 50% abroad. Oysters of Nam Kee, based on the novel by Kees van Beijnum, is a Euros 2.2m production by Egmond, is to be directed by newcomer Pollo de Pimentel. Egmond's German co-producer is Neue Impuls Film. Part of the budget is to come from private investors via the current tax scheme and shooting starts on November 29.

During the Co-production Forum, twelve Dutch projects were pitched to international representatives which included Celluloid Dreams, Bavaria Film International, Neue Impuls, WDR, The British Film Council, Miramax UK and HBO International.

Previous co-productions resulting from the forum include Fatima Jebli Ouazzani's second feature Halima's Paradise (with Germany's Pandora Film) and Stijn Coninx' Sea Of Silence, with German co-producers Lichtblick and ZDF/Arte. This year's favourites were the true story of teenage violence Godforsaken (ID Film and Rinkel Film Productions) and the tale about the quaint historic practice of Frisian polesitting, Sportsman Of The Century (Staccato Films).