EXCLUSIVE: Ena Sendijareviç’s anticipated next project The Possessed and Nina Gantz’s animation project Once Upon An Egg will be among the projects presented at the second edition of Dutch industry showcase NLWave26, which will run September 30 to October 2 in Utrecht.
The Possessed is a love triangle drama set during Europe’s 17th-century witch hunts. Ariane Labed stars in the French-language film, which is in pre-production. It is being produced by Maarten Van Der Ven’s Studio Ruba as a coproduction with Barcelona-based Distinto Films, with backing from Catalan fund ICEC.
Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker Sendijareviç’s previous film Sweet Dreams premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 2023 and was the Netherlands’ international feature Oscar entry.
Gantz’s Once Upon An Egg is a stop-motion animation about two pigeons in search of a new home when their nest in central Amsterdam is cleaned away, along with their only egg.
Gantz’s short film Wander To Wonder won a Bafta award in 2023 and was also nominated for an Oscar for best animated short film.
Also in the announcement of the first projects is The Dawn Of The Post Plantation, by arch provocateur Renzo Martens, about Congolese plantation workers who use art as a tool to reclaim stolen land. It is a follow-up to Martens’ feature doc White Cube.
Afghan-Dutch director Aboozar Amini will be presenting his first narrative feature, Tahmina. Amini is known for documentaries including Kabul, City In The Wind, which opened the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2018.
Documentary is an arena in which the Dutch have traditionally excelled and non-fiction will again be strongly represented in NLWave26.
Russian-Dutch director Aliona van der Horst will present The Return, looking at the experiences of an elderly couple in Kyiv.
Suzanne Raes will be in Utrecht with We Had A Plan, following a gay couple who have worked illegally as cleaners in the Netherlands for a decade. They return to the Philippines but soon realise they won’t be able to fulfil their dreams of starting a family together there.
Meanwhile, Menno Otten is presenting his latest feature documentary Still City, an observational film based on 125 years of street footage of Amsterdam.
The full NLWave 26 lineup will be confirmed in August.
Last year, around 40 international guests came to Utrecht for the inaugural NLWave event, which introduced 45 new Dutch projects. Several of the titles launched there have gone on to enjoy significant festival careers, including Muriel d’Ansembourg’s Truly Naked and Mees Peijnenburg’s A Family, which were both selected for this year’s Berlinale.
‘Building on the success of NLWave25, we are thrilled to once again showcase Dutch film talent to the world,” said Netherlands Film Fund CEO Iwana Chronis. “With bold and distinctive stories, both emerging and established filmmakers prove once more that there is a true wave of Dutch talent making its mark.”
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