Leading international festival programmers and sales agents have given a strong endorsement of NLWave26, the second edition of the Dutch industry showcase presenting 35 new projects and works in progress that finished on Friday (October 2).
“It was my first time in Utrecht and I was impressed by everything,” commented Frédéric Corvez, President of Paris-based Urban Sales. “Everything is professional, well pitched and super well organised. I had a very efficient two days and I am really happy to follow up on a few projects.”
Fellow French seller Laurent Danielou of Loco Films is currently handling world sales on director Mari Sanders’ disability drama Stand Up which premiered in Tribeca, and was a work in progress at last year’s inaugural NLWave. “It’s a wonderful film, very strong and original, very different and also very fresh,” he said of the Dutch crowdpleaser. A French deal is shortly to be announced.
Danielou was in Utrecht on the lookout for fresh Dutch art house projects which Loco can sell or coproduce and described the event as “very positive, a chance to see everything.”
Sundance Film Festival senior programmer John Nein confirmed that he would give serious consideration to some of the titles presented at NLWave, adding that the event had given him a ”good sense of where the national cinema is. It’s a broad range of work; it’s quality work, it is well curated.”
“We’re always interested in an early glimpse at projects because it often involves the filmmakers themselves,” Nein continued. “What I like about NLWave is that you really do have a range - fiction, non-fiction, kids’ movies and adult dramas, but also you have a range of stages of production. There are films here that are picture locked and there are films here that are not even fully financed.”
Toronto International Film Festival vice president public programming Keith Bennie was likewise upbeat. “Firstly, it was extremely well organised,” he said of the two days of intensive pitches in Utrecht.
Bennie helps programme TIFF’s Next Wave programme, foregrounding work of interest to teenagers and young adults. “The coming of age films were especially exciting. To see some of the early material and be able to talk to filmmakers and see which audiences they might connect with is really valuable.” He also relished the speed dating sessions which gave him the chance to explain TIFF’s vision to the filmmakers.
“I thought everything went more smoothly this year, the pitches were on time and confident and trained,” agreed Alissa Simon, chief programmer of Palm Springs International Film Festival (Jan 7-18). She has already programmed Sander Burger’s Youri, sold by LevelK and a work in progress in NLWave25, for the next edition of Palm Springs in January and was scouting for further projects for 2028.
Among the documentaries, there was widespread admiration for the clever and heartfelt pitch by Robert-Jonathan Koeyers for his work in progress, Little Lost Things. This is a deeply personal family story which deals with a moment of professional calamity for the filmmaker when he loses vast amounts of material on a hard disk.
Programmers also responded to the formal adventurousness of many of the hybrid titles including Zindoc’s new Myanmar film, What Happened To My Country, What Happened To Me?
There was curiosity too about Willemiek Kluijfhout’s pitch The Woman Who Made Van Gogh Famous. Produced by Ruby Deelen through 100% Film, the feature, which is still at an early stage, takes a feminist perspective on Van Gogh. It will tell the still largely unchronicled story of how Jo van Gogh-Bonger, the artist’s sister in law, rescued him from obscurity after his death and helped make him into the world famous figure he is today.
Global reach
Delegates responded to the “truly global” range of Dutch work which included feature documentaries dealing with Afghanistan (Aboozar Amini’s Kabul Year, Zero), war-torn Syria (Sakir Khader’s Idlib) and post-apartheid South Africa (In Your Shadow from Thabi Mooi and Tom Fassaert) as well as dramas addressing the experiences of immigrant families in the Netherlands - Hyo-Soon Kaag’s Kimchi & Potatoes, about a teenage girl originally from South Korea, and Yim Brakel’s autobiographical Marseille, following a 12 year old boy adopted from South Korea as a boy going to watch the 1998 world cup match between the Netherlands and the country of his birth.
Others were “very excited” by Yfke van Berckelaer’s high concept horror picture, Fosfor, produced by Make Way Film. The work in progress title, also pitched last year, features a woman caught in an endless loop, threatened by monsters in the dark, condemned to die again and again every time her matches run out and the light is extinguished.
Family appeal
Animated movies and family fare drew some of the most positive responses. Nina Gantz’s €9m stop motion animated feature Once Upon An Egg was a favourite both among sellers and distributors. Lemming’s anarchic Annie MG Schmidt adaptation Scrumple was also liked on the basis of the very lively footage shown as was Boudewijnn Koole’s Meis, produced by Witfilm and a kids’ movie with a strong flavour of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
Several festival programmers and sellers responded warmly to the “really vibrant” early material from Michiel van Erp’s Confetti Rain produced by De Familie Film & TV whose adolescent hero has very big dreams and who falls in love with a boy named Daniel. “The fantasy element of the Queer story felt great,” enthused one buyer.
Others warmed to the irony and dark humour of Steffen Haars’ The Guy Who Loved Nickelback, about a long suffering fan of the “most widely disrespected rock band of the 21st Century.” This was tipped as a potential selection for genre and midnight slots at festivals.
A strong selection that delivers
“There were documentaries, genre films and art house titles, it was a very good selection. What I really liked was seeing the projects from last year that are now almost finished,” said Gamze Celik, sales acquisitions manager at The Playmaker Munich. She cited titles like Fosfor and In Your Shadow that were presented at a much earlier stage in 2025 and were back this year, close to completion. ”That was nice to see, that the projects from last year found partners and that film funding works here in the Netherlands.
No comments yet