In production: Buitenlanders / Foreigners / Ausländer
date: 19-09-2011Directors: Joren Molter (Veendam), Rene Houwen (New York), Thijs Gloger (Berlin)
Producer: Rene Houwen
D.O.P.: Thijs Gloger
Summer, fall, winter. Veendam (the Netherlands), New York, Berlin. All across the world, people are changing places in search of a better, happier, freer, wealthier and sexier life. Foreigners follows three individuals in search of a new home and a new identity. Globalisation, however, is playing tricks on them. In a worldwide community, who is the Other? Neocolonism, alas, is not what it used to be either. Nor are prejudices and national pride. Let’s just hope that Jesse, Amy and Victoria will come up with something fancier.
featuring Polina Gladkova in the Berlin part
In post-production: Die Welt
date: 18-09-2011Director: Alex Pitstra
Screenplay: Alex Pitstra, Thijs Gloger & Abdallah Rezgui
Producer: Rene Houwen
D.O.P.: Thijs Gloger
Starring: Abdelhamid Naouara, Ilse Heus, Mohsen Ben Hassen
For many Tunisians Europe is the promised land that seems closer than ever since the Jasmine revolution. Separated by the Mediterranean sea, the other side represents an escape to a freer, more promising existence in the ‘real’ world. 22-year-old Abdallah, who works for meagre wages at a DVD shop in the centre of Tunis, also dreams of crossing the sea. He sells Western movies with a passion, movies that only strengthen his notion of crossing. During a holiday with his family at tourist seaside resort Sousse, Abdallah’s chances seem to take turn for the better. His westernized cousins, visiting from Nice, take him to a dance party in a disco. There he meets 36-year-old Anna. Will Abdallah succeed—like his father did in the past—in getting to Europe through a Dutch woman? Or will he have to find other ways out of his native country? And does he want to leave at all?
Die Welt paints an unpolished picture of a young Tunisian who longs for a Western dream reality. This slice-of-life story was partly based on the experiences of Dutch-Tunisian filmmaker Karim Alexander Pitstra and his family.
In pre-production: Peepshow
date: 06-09-2011Director, writer, editor: Thijs Gloger
Producer: Rene Houwen
Executive producer: Petra Weggemans
Starring: Albert Secuur & Dunja Jocić
Peepshow, a film about wanting to watch and wanting to be watched.
Part 1 (teaser)
Bus driver Pattje has a lot of colleagues, but no friends nor any special girlfriend: he gets along fine watching internet porn in his one man apartment. Driving the bus on same dull countryside track for twenty-five years has made him some nice savings. One night, quietly surfing away on the world wide web, Pattje addresses Eastern European student Yelena, who does a little moonlighting as a webcam stripper. He offers her a considerable sum of money to come over to the Netherlands and move in with him for half a year. Although it’s clear that he doesn’t need her to do the dishes and dust the skirting, he will not get any more specific about his intentions. Yet, to his surprise, the bright young lady agrees to his unusual proposal. Money is not the first of her concerns. She simply likes to be watched.
Part 2 (teaser)
Nobody can get to pornstar Katya. She’s hardly ever any friendlier than expected, and transforms from playbunny into wheeler dealer as soon as she leaves the set. You’ve got to pay to watch and Sex Sells, and so the iron lady travels all across the continent to do costumer acquisition and build up her own future business imperium. Katya is her all fans’s wet dream, but what on earth does Katya dream of?
