1 – 3 March five carefully selected Dutch contemporary films will be screened at Landmark.

The event will begin Friday 1 March with an opening cocktail and the screening of Brimstone, starting at 17:00, so as to allow colleagues invited to other events that evening to join those.

Brimstone (2016, 148 min.)

A suspenseful tale of guilt and retribution that unfolds at the end of the 19th century. A dark, violent and epic western about a young women and her family whose lives changes drastically when a diabolical preacher comes to town. This epically long, lurid, violent western from Dutch filmmaker Martin Koolhoven has a kind of Tarantino-ish prolixity and narrative ingenuity. Despite its very indulgent length, it never bores.

Saturday 2 March

16.00 Layla M (2016, 98 min.)

Layla is an 18-year old girl, born and raised in Amsterdam. Layla is smart, witty and stubborn – and of Moroccan background. In the times of constant terrorist threat, she struggles with the increasing suspicion towards girls with headscarves and boys with beards that she witnesses every day. While her frustration grows, her faith intensifies. Eventually, she joins a group of Muslims who fight for their practice of Islam. Layla posts films online depicting the horrors in Syria and Gaza and makes political flyers. And she flirts with the charismatic Abdel. When her peaceful brother and she are arrested by the police, Layla, feeling hurt and isolated in her anger, more and more in conflict with her parents, is left with only one option: to leave home. 

18:30 Waterboys (2016, 89 min.)

Waterboys tells the funny and moving story of crime novelist Victor and his cello-playing son Zack. When they get thrown out by their women on the same day, the two men have to sort out both themselves and their relationship during a turbulent trip to Scotland. A film about a father who needs to grow up and a son who should take life less seriously. 

Sunday 3 March

16:00 Those who feel the fire burning (2014, 74 min.)

A story, told by the wandering ghost of a dead man, about the hopeless existence of refugees stuck at the edge of Europe. As a group of refugees tries to enter Europe illegally by boat, a storm suddenly appears and all hell breaks loose when an old man falls overboard. His perception shifts into another dimension: a dark, hallucinatory place. Driven by a mysterious power and desperately in search of his loved ones, his soul passes by the everyday reality of many castaway refugees at the border of the alleged paradise, Europe. 

18:30 Tonio (2016, 100 min.)

A film based on on the autobiographical “requiem novel” from one of the Netherlands’s most acclaimed writers, A.F.Th. van der Heijden, about the tragic accident that claimed the life of the writer's only son. Twenty one-year- old Tonio is hit by car and taken to hospital in a critical condition. He dies shortly afterwards. The lives of his parents who had to watch their only son die in intensive care are transformed drastically. His death leaves them with a phantom pain – everything around them serves to remind them of him. They mourn, but at the same time have to try to prevent their own lives being drawn into a downward spiral of sorrow.