Praten met De Nachtwacht

Colleagues and friends look back on the life of writer Joost Zwagerman.

Spring 2012: the SP is doing better than ever in the polls. The party stands at well over thirty seats. With that, Emile Roemer could very well become the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Director Coen Verbraak approaches the SP leader with the proposal to follow him as he prepares for the elections, which are likely to come in a year or two. Roemer says ‘yes’. For these could be historic times, both for his party and for the Netherlands. Two days after that meeting, the first Rutte cabinet falls, and everything accelerates rapidly. This documentary meticulously shows what happens from that moment on.

A documentary about the life and suicide of Antonie Kamerling (1966-2010).

For thirty years she was the undisputed queen of the Dutch talk show: Sonja Barend. With Coen Verbraak, she takes one last look back: at her motivations, the history of her family, and her father.

He won the Louis d'Or, the most important theatre award in the Netherlands, twice. He played unforgettable roles in films such as Cloaca, De Belager, and Leedvermaak, and starred in TV series De Uitverkorene, 't Schaep met de 5 Pooten, and De Prooi. Pierre Bokma celebrates his sixtieth birthday on December 20, 2015. Reason enough for a personal portrait of this versatile man.

The film focuses on the tumultuous romance in the lives of four women in The Hague. Teenage daughter Eva, her mother Judith, aunt Barbara and older sister Anna make it under one roof Hague together a nice game of. They are beautiful, courageous and sensible, but sometimes they just do not know in a world full of tender love, serial dating, slaked lust, affairs, children's desires and indestructible old loves.

Three wacky sisters try to save their inheritance from their supposedly gay brother, who suddenly appears with a fiancé in tow. If he gets married, their father's will stipulates that he gets the family hotel in Portugal. So the sisters put aside their personal differences and set out to stop the wedding at all costs.

In 1988, three young gay men, Ronnie, Lennart and Bas, throw themselves into Amsterdam's nightlife scene. It’s a life full of friendship, sex and drugs. Until the mysterious AIDS virus casts a shadow over their lives and one of them disappears after becoming infected. Thirty-two years later, in the middle of the 2021 lockdown, Ronnie recognises the missing Bas in the subway. An evening unfolds that none of them had expected to see, but which had been in the air for years. The AIDS epidemic has had a major impact on all three of their lives. Where they lost each other 32 years ago, they hope to find each other again.

A family film, based on a well-known Dutch story from the Middle Ages. Mariken tells the compelling and poetic story of spirited young girl named Mariken. The orphan Mariken lives in a secluded forest with an eccentric old hermit. One day, she decides to leave her surroundings and sets off for town to buy a new goat. On her adventurous journey into the 'real' world, she finds out about the good and bad sides of people.

Johan Dros is born as eleventh consecutive son of soccer-obsessed pa Rinus, who raises his boys mainly as the small island Texel's team. Johan's rare reprieves from training for a sport he doesn't care for cease when ma dies. After captain brother Johhny sort of steals his local girl-friend Evy, Johan leaves for Amsterdam, where he becomes a hairdresser and would-be singer. Soccer, a vocal TV talent-hunt and Evy will bring them all together again, but also raise unprecedented strife in the Dros family

How reliable are memories? Liefje explores the boundary between reality and fantasy. In a therapeutic session, the 18-year-old Esther reconstructs the murder of her father that she committed with her boyfriend Erik. Flashbacks reveal the facts of the matter. The schoolgirl grows up between quarrelling parents, opposes her mother's uninhibited sexual education and despises her father Robert after he has fathered a twin with his new wife, who is much younger. She tells Erik about a vague memory of her father, allegedly abusing her sexually. Notwithstanding the difference between the gaps in Esther's memory and the facts, the outraged Erik offers her to be her avenger.

A sea faring father, a man living on the edge of mental sanity, periodically sees his young son. During the visits, the father tells the boy stories, exotic as well as close to home, about Magonia. This is a mythical place where clouds represent impossible dreams and unfulfilled desires. But the characters in this imaginary place all curiously resemble people now living near the father.

On the day of her abortion, Dana looks for her own way to come to terms with her decision. An intimate and personal look at the lives of women in an abortion clinic

Two ten-year-old girls go to a subtropical swimming paradise. They look forward to the wave pool and the chute, but are distracted by other, older swimmers. Like teenage girls with real breasts in the bubble bath, and big boys blocking the chute or taking their goggles. The little girls gradually seem to realise the days of their carefree childhood are numbered.

Two activists and lovers meet a thrillseeking anarchist who wants to help them in their missions to improve the world. Unsure about the what and how, they start to doubt whether they can even make a difference at all - until their new friend proposes a radical plan. A short film about climate change and our inability to do 'the right thing' for the world at all times.

In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Walter Süskind is a member of the Dutch Jewish Council who rescues hundreds of children from the concentration camps.

All parents, children and grandparents of ‘Oogappels’ end the year in style in the New Year’s Eve special ‘Goudappels’. Everyone is preparing for a festive evening. Although New Year’s Eve also makes some people a bit despondent. They all experience the midnight hour in their own way. Time to get everything together and make some New Year’s resolutions. What has the past year brought? And what does the coming year have in store? Will New Year’s Eve go as expected for everyone?

Bezorgd (At a Glance) is about a quest for connection by people from various social backgrounds, who are challenged to shake off their prejudices. For pizza delivery guy Izem and his customers, this is not without risk.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company tells the story of Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. A contemporary of Rembrandt and, indeed, more celebrated during his life, Goltzius seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. In return, he promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of illustrating the Old Testament’s biblical stories. Erotic tales of Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Deliah and John the Baptist and Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatisations of these erotic stories for his court.

A young couple decides to travel to an old friend in the south of France. Once arrived, the couple is confronted with the current reality of a changing world. After a long, destructive period spent in nightlife, Terrance finds himself in an uncomfortable silence. He decides to travel in a camper to the south of France with his girlfriend Sanne to visit an old friend. As soon as they have arrived, the duo is confronted with the reality of a changing world.

In this worldwide bestseller, we watch four men over a period of more than thirty years: lawyer Jude, actor Willem, visual artist JB and architect Malcolm. The story is the history of their friendship, as they remain closely connected with each other during the rest of their lives. They develop their careers in the city where ambition and success are the indicators of a successful life: New York. Ivo van Hove adapts Hanya Yanagihara’s novel to theater and creates a penetrating performance.

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1944, during World War II. Andries Riphagen, a powerful underworld boss, has made his fortune by putting his many criminal talents at the service of the Nazi occupiers. But the long battle is about to end and the freedom fighters, who have been persecuted and murdered for years, are abandoning their hideouts to mercilessly hunt down those who have collaborated with the killers.

Instead of making the planned trip to India, the 27 year old Fem becomes a backpacker in her hometown; Amsterdam. Fem does not dare to tell her boyfriend the truth and she gets tangled up in a crazy lie.

A story about two half-sisters life in the eighteenth century Suriname. There is Lynda, a white colonial and slave owner, and her slave Mini-Mini's. While Lynda is slowly embittered by the hard life in the colony, Mini-Mini gets a chance at her own happiness. The question is, if she dares to seize that chance, as this happiness is at the expense of her mistress and half sister?

We follow a man who seems to be forever dripping with water, who meets a group of people that pretend he's simply not there. The film follows the man's struggle to become part of the others and learns what he must give up to do so.

O Die Zee is a modern Dutch retelling Homer's Odyssey in the form of a rock opera. It was performed in the summer of 2014 in the open air of Fort Rammekens, The Netherlands.

19-year old Belle practices playing the violin diligently, but is unable to impart her music with a sensitive undertone. Her life changes when she discovers that sexual desire stimulates passion in her music.

2 November 2004, shortly before nine in the morning. In The Hague, the report comes in that in Amsterdam Theo van Gogh has been murdered. All warning bells start ringing. With the country in flames, sometimes literally, politicians and officials in The Hague have to neutralise all sorts of known and unknown stings, and just when Van Gogh’s cremation seems to herald a period of relative peace, a second explosion follows: the attack on the Hofstad Network in the Laakkwartier in The Hague. A reconstruction of nine days of political high tension and flying dust, a decade after the assassination of the trendsetting filmmaker and TV presenter.

While camping in France, Eric and Eddy fall in with two women. Eric talks to Silke, a Ugandan studying medicine in Holland. She tells him about her life and asks about the book he's writing: it's the story of his love affair with Reza. He tells her the story and we see it in flashbacks: Reza explodes into his boring life, she's unpredictable and their relationship becomes intense.

A coming of age story of three young friends during their student years in Amsterdam.

After 21-year-old student Tonio dies in a traffic accident, his novelist parents face sorrow and regret as they suffer the agony of losing their only child.

Following a dispute with his father, a young man falls prey to cryptocurrency's allure and an entrepreneur's audacious promises of financial freedom.

Rising, rather autobiographical novelist Giph has a hot girlfriend, doctor and model Samarinde. His crude, domineering and progressive mother Ria's suffering an incurable decease in which she suffers from paraplegia. Her inevitably ensuing death is brought forward with euthanasia. Giph is struggling to handle the situation with his mother. Shortly after his mother has passed he away, he decides to join his fun loving friends on La Palma for a holiday. There Samarinde tells her boyfriend she's expecting his baby

When Lot goes blind in an accident, her world comes to an abrupt halt. Her plans to travel, study, dive and live together with her boyfriend Casper seem to fall apart. Lot fiercely resists her new helplessness and tries to escape her painful reality by dreaming as much as possible. In her dreams, she is free and can see again. Only when she accepts her new reality does she begin to get a grip on her life again.

In Kings of War, director Ivo van Hove focuses on political leadership. The original texts were retranslated by Rob Klinkenberg and then thoroughly adapted: the Hundred Years' War between England and France, and the Rose Wars between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne, which are emphatically present as a historical context in the original pieces, were referred to the background in the adaptation in order to accommodate a varied portrait of successive kings. As leaders in times of political instability and war, they show remarkable affinities with world leaders today.

When Jan, director, receives the good news that he can make his first feature film, his source of inspiration and lead actress, Kelly, is in love. With Vincent. Something that the actress has not yet shared with 'her director'. When Jan shows up at Kelly's door with champagne to celebrate that they are finally going to make a film, a confrontational evening follows. In other words, the first honest conversation between two extremely insecure souls.

Isa and her older brother Kars' parents change course and start a campsite in France. Isa and Kars feel like they are moving to Timbuktu and losing everything. Fortunately, they don't complain for long, because they soon make new friends. But while new friendships blossom, Camping Timbuktu runs into trouble. Not far from them, another campsite has opened, and its unsympathetic owner tries to damage Camping Timbuktu in every way possible. It even looks like the campsite will have to close... Will Isa and Kars manage to keep Timbuktu open?