International Film Festival Rotterdam is opening with a homegrown Dutch film for the first time since 2018.
Writer-director Michiel ten Horn’s Fabula aims to combine grittiness with magical realism to tell the story of a small-time crook, played by Fedja van Huêt, star of Oscar- winning Dutch movie Character.
The setting is almost as important as the storyline, says ten Horn. He shot the film in Limburg, a province in the very muddy south of the Netherlands, close to the Belgian and German border. It is famous today as the birthplace of right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
“I am originally from there as well,” explains the filmmaker, whose credits include 2012’s The Deflowering Of Eva Van End which world premiered at Toronto and played at Rotterdam, 2014 comedy How To Avoid Everything and 2022 local box office hit Hotel Sinestra.
“In terms of stories and traditions, [Limburg] is more Catholic than the rest of Holland. It also has carnival which is connected with Catholicism….and for some reason, maybe just because there is so much countryside, there is just more folklore.”
As a border area, Limburg also has its fair share of crime – and crime and folklore are the main drivers of Fabula. One moment, there is a shootout or stand-off between gangsters and the next is a fantasy scene set in India in the 1600s.
Hyper-realistic
Ten Horn says he was aiming for “a hyper-realistic” feel that is a “a bit larger than life” even in the film’s grimmest moments. “The comical tone is always just round the corner…it’s between comedy, crime and fantasy. You are never quite sure what to expect.”
He shot in Limburg’s forbidding landscape in November and December. “It was grey and rainy all the time, just as we wanted it,” the director explains. “It just had to feel uncomfortable all the time.”
Ten Horn describes lead actor van Huêt as a “a very technical actor” who was able to “nail” the southern dialect of his character. “I shoot very little coverage. I know that he likes it when a director knows exactly what he wants.”
Inspirations
Ten Horn, who studied animation, cites filmmakers including Denmark’s Anders Thomas Jensen approach to characters and Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s “opera-esque” approach to storytelling. He also reveals David Lean’s widescreen epic Lawrence Of Arabia was an inspiration. “[Fabula is] are nothing compared to the grand scale of Lawrence Of Arabia but I wanted to check it again as an adventure movie, just to see how it works.”
He says he is also a big fan of early Wes Anderson films such as Rushmore and Bottle Rocket.
Fabula is produced by Sander Verdonk through New Amsterdam Film Company, with Germany’s 2Pilots and Belgium’s Fobic. It secured backing from Film Fund Limburg and the Netherlands Film Fund.The Searchers is handling the Dutch release in April.
Ten Horn met New Amsterdam co-founder Jim Taihuttu, the director of features such as Wolf and The East as a film student. Taihuttu was an executive producer on Fabula and an important sounding board for ten Horn, who took inspiration from his hard-driving perfectionism. “I know Jim is quite relentless as a director….I also knew that they would go a long way with this film,” he says. ”[New Amsterdam) are risk-takers and author-driven. Jim and I lived together in a student house and grew up having big ambitions.”
Ten Horn is now planning to shoot a tragicomedy called Any Other Night starring Marwan Kenzari and written with Patrick Whistler, in Berlin later this year. It will be his first English-language film. Financing is expected to be closed shortly.
No comments yet