That Joyous Eve...

This government commissioned film -- made on the occasion of the forty year anniversary of queen Wilhelmina's reign -- chronicles the lives of two Dutch families from 1898 to 1938 against the backdrop of the social and political events of the times. It shows the emergence of trade unions, the troubled years of the First World War, the development of aviation and Schiphol airport, the Dutch East Indies and the lives of the Dutch royal family.

Five swindle stories, taking place in five international cities: Tokyo, Japan ("Fumiko's Five Benefactors" by Hiromichi Horikawa); Amsterdam, The Netherlands ("A River of Diamonds" by Roman Polanski); Naples, Italy ("The Road Map" by Ugo Gregoretti); Paris, France ("The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower" by Claude Chabrol); and Marrakesh, Morocco ("The Confidence Man" by Jean-Luc Godard). Godard's segment was not included in the original French cinema release, and Polanski's segment was not included on the 2016 home disc release.

The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.

In 1939, Charlotte Salomon leaves Berlin to seek refuge at her grandparents' villa in the south of France. A little later, war breaks out, and Charlotte must, besides forgetting all she left behind, deal with her grandmother's depression, and her mother's suicide. To fight despair, Charlotte starts to paint, producing over one thousand images. "Is my life real, or is it theater?" This is the title she gives her body of work, which highlights her former life in Berlin. She finds herself though her art, but in 1943 is deported to Germany and Auschwitz.

1920s Germany. Two sisters aged six years, no sooner see their remaining parent buried when they are torn apart. Lotte goes to live with her upper middle class Dutch aunt in Holland, Anna to work as a farm hand on her German uncle's rural farm. The World War II impacts each of their lives and finally in old age they meet again.

Disappointed with humanity, God wants to revoke his contract with humanity and wants to take back the stone tablets containing the ten commandments. To this end an angel is sent out to affect the personal lives of three humans so an appropriate child may be conceived.

On his wedding day, mere hours before the statute of limitations for his crimes expires, revengeful mobsters abduct former criminal Jean Verdier. The gang leader's daughter - who's still in love with Jean - tries to stall the police until the clock strikes twelve and he can no longer be prosecuted.

Italy, mid '60s. Three guys from a poor neighbourhood try to get rich by printing fake money using the fact that one of them works as a typographer. The story unravels around their embarrassed efforts to spend the money, their little family issues and ends with a surprise.

Back to his hometown, a former marshal finds his house occupied by a young woman working as a fishwife.

Cornelis van Doorn is the CEO of VD, a meat factory as well as a developer of contraceptives. Cornelis is the patriarch of the Van Doorn family: a decadent bunch of loose morals who only lust for money and power. When the man is thinking about retiring, he has to find the right heir to take over the family business.

An out of work engineer is hired as the private chauffeur of a rich playboy, and has to drive to Vlissingen to pick up the latter's fiancée. On the way back from Vlissingen, the car breaks down and the engineer and the fiancée travel to Rotterdam to get some spare parts -- a trip full of amorous entanglements and mistaken identities.

Short film in which Dutch author Simon Carmiggelt visits the hairdresser.

Long-nosed Cyrano de Bergerac helps an army officer woo Roxane, the woman he loves.

“Ciske de Rat” belongs to the Dickensean “little man’s hard life” model and tells a deceptively simple story about a boy in modern Netherlands. Persecution, loneliness, adults’ hostility, fear, mixture of obstinacy and tenderness, and even an imprisonment. Excellent camera movement and delicate portraying of Ciske’s fragile soul put this film out of merely historical context and ensure its place in the history of great cinema.

A young Amsterdam lawyer seems to be doing well, but occasionally he is overwhelmed by an unstoppable need for booze. During one of his delirious episodes, he witnesses the death of a squatter at a police station. Worried about his career, he hesitates to speak out.

At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.

The actual life and the fiction created by a successful pulp author begin to blend together.

A blind girl and a disabled singer fall in love.

A boy is resentful of his mother's budding romance with the best friend of her late husband, and is torn and confused about his emerging feelings for Toni, a young girl in his neighborhood. His fascination with an antique Oriental knife leads him to steal it and he uses it to try to impress Toni while at the same time trying to break up his mother's relationhip.

An independent-thinking doctor in a rural community with his own ideas of how medicine should be practiced begins to find himself ostracized from the community after one of his patients commits suicide.

Eight newspaper-columns by Dutch writer Simon Carmiggelt were turned into a film in honor of his 70st birthday.

When his colleague presents him with (forged) evidence of his wife Sylvette's unfaithfulness, factory owner Jean Sourdier kills him in a fit of rage. After fifteen years in prison he is determined to take revenge on his wife by killing Ninette, a daughter from her second marriage.

When Erica Maerlant is shot dead during a secret dance rehearsal at her luxurious villa, the Maerlant household turns out to be a serpent's nest of intrigue where everyone has a motive for the murder.

Bezet gebied ('Occupied Territory') is the first feature-length Dutch fiction film to deal with World War II, and was made in a documentary style. Dutch diva Ellen Vogel is stunning in her feature debut, in spite of the mediocre image quality. We're showingt a digitalisation of a version that underwent analogue conservation in 1983. It's not a restoration, so the image quality is average.

Tim, now a respectable family man, runs into his old buddy Bodde. Bodde convinces Tim to go out with him under the motto: "Laugh, laugh, laugh!" Tim calls his wife to tell her "he'll be a little late," while Bodde keeps persuading him to stay with him for a new deal or a wonderful plan, and so they roam the country. Along the way, they swindle money from everyone and meet the young, beautiful Aafke. Isn't Tim too old for all this?

Bert Verbloeme has survived the war but lost the love of his life. Now he suffers from a depression and has to learn how to live a meaningful life again.

A woman and her daughter lives in Oostdijk, a village near Amsterdam. One night when the mother is on her way home, she is killed in a car accident in the street they live in.

A young woman is seduced by a wealthy diplomat, who leaves her his business card and arranges to meet her. She goes to a jeweler and, using the card, asks to finalize a jewelry sale at her supposed husband's home. The jeweler arrives while the diplomat is taking a bath and is greeted by the young woman, who offers him tea.

The older Prince Bernhard tells the story of his exciting life to Princess Máxima. After all, when Prince Willem-Alexander takes the throne, she will be his Queen and take up much the same position as Bernhard did as husband to former Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. His story takes us from Palace Soestdijk to once-German Reckenwalde with the young Bernhard, to Nazi-Berlin, wartime in London, Argentina and Canada and much more. It paints a portrait of the world from the thirties to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Bernhard survived the deepest of crises: accusation of treason by Ian Fleming during the war, corruption in the fifties and seventies, extra-marital daughters and even being the main reason for a dutch governmental crisis.