As it becomes more aggressive in handling Dutch feature films in the international market, Hilversum-based sales and production outfit Mountain Road Entertainment has closed an all rights German deal on Ate De Jong’s wartime drama The Rotterdam Blitz (formerly titled Bombardment) with distributor KSM Film.

The film, set in Rotterdam during its brutal bombardment by the Luftwaffe in 1940, will go out in Dutch cinemas in December via Dutch FilmWorks.

Meanwhile, Mountain Road is also beginning sales on Loving Ibiza, a youth-oriented ensemble comedy drama about four couples on the “ultimate party island.” Directed by Johan Nijenhuis, this features music from Armin van Buuren, the Dutch trance producer and DJ who has several times been voted Number 1 in DJ Magazine’s list of the 100 most popular DJs. Van Buuren also has an acting role in the movie, due for release in the Netherlands by A-Film in early 2013.

Both films are likely to screen to international buyers for the first time at the European Film Market in Berlin in February. 

Other titles Mountain Road has in preparation include Hilde van Mieghem’s Madly In Love (a Dutch remake of the director’s own Belgian film Smoorverliefd) and Escape, an adaptation of the best-selling novel by Heleen van Royen. Shooting is due to begin in early summer next year on that co-production with Fu Works and Caviar Films.

“We don’t think the kind of films are really festival films. They are more commercial types of movies that are very interesting for an international market,” company head Sjef Scholte told ScreenDaily. “The kind of films we represent are very commercial films. They don’t have let’s say any arty farty kind of feeling in (them).”

In recent years, Dutch feature films have often been handled internationally by big foreign sales companies but Scholte insists that a local company like Mountain Road is better placed to exploit them. “We like to provide my Dutch colleagues with a more exclusive and clear approach (and) with the right arguments to the right distribution companies,” Scholte commented.

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