The East

Source: Photo: Daan van Citters

The East

Filming is underway in Java, Indonesia, on wartime drama The East, which XYZ Films represents internationally at the EFM and jointly handles US rights with ICM Partners.

Jim Taihuttu’s Dutch drama stars Golden Calf winners Marwan Kenzari (Wolf, Guy Ritchie’s upcoming Aladdin, Ariel Vromen’s The Angel) and Martijn Lakemeier (Winter in Wartime) and takes place during the Indonesian War of Independence in 1946.

Lakemeier (pictured opposite Coen Bril in first look photo) plays a young Dutch soldier among forces dispatched to quell an uprising in the Dutch East Indies colony who falls under the spell of a charismatic and brutal army captain (Kenzari) and begins to suspect he is on the wrong side of history.

New Amsterdam, Wrong Men (Belgium) and Salto Films (Indonesia) are producing The East, which falls under the Telescoop programme and has support from The Netherlands Film Fund, Production Incentive, CoBO Fund, OCW, NTR, Wallimage and the Belgian Tax Shelter.

Production will take place primarily in Indonesia, with additional shooting in the Netherlands scheduled for autumn. Splendid Film will release The East in the Netherlands and Belgium in spring 2020.

XYZ Films’ EFM sales slate includes Stowaway starring Anna Kendrick and Toni Collette, Synchronic starring Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan, Prisoners Of The Ghostland with Nicolas Cage and Imogen Poots, and The Silencing headlined by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Annabelle Wallis.