Rinkel unveils A Real Van Meegeren

Leading Dutch production outfit Rinkel Film has revealed further details of its new feature about notorious art forger Han van Meegeren.

A Real Van Meegeren, as the project is called, will be directed by Rudolf van den Berg (Tirza, Süskind), who has cowritten the screenplay with Jan Eilander.

It is being produced by Rinkel Film (through Reinier Selen) together with Fu Works (San Fu Maltha) and Cadenza Films (Jeroen Koolbergen). The other partners are, in Luxembourg, Tarantula Luxembourg (Donato Rotunno), and, in Croatia, Nukleus Film Croatia (Sinisa Juricic).

Cineart will release in Benelux.

Van Meegeren is often called “one of the greatest art forgers of the Twentieth Century”. He was renowned for his fake Vermeers and for his forgeries of work by Seventeenth Century Dutch masters.

Among the clients he managed to hoodwink in his shady but illustrious career was leading Nazi, Hermann Göring. The forger was also a notorious womaniser who married several times. In 1947, shortly before his death, he was put on trial for forgery and fraud.

The new film is budgeted at €3.6m ($4.9m). The project has already received script and project development support from the Netherlands Film Fund and is in line for production backing through the Fund’s new cash rebate incentive and its “selective funding programme.”

Tygo Gernandt (Süskind) is to play the lead in the film, which is being made as a Dutch/Luxembourg/Croatian co-production. 

“It is a very difficult part to play because in our film Han van Meegeren is a narcissistic pain in the ass most of the time but Tygo has an enormous amount of charm and warmth,” Rinkel boss Reinier Selen commented of the casting.

Shooting is due to start next summer with delivery due for early 2016. Sales agents are reportedly circling the project already.

As in recent George Clooney film The Monuments Men, there will be a short sequence set in the caves in Austria in which the Nazis concealed their looted art.

Rinkel has various other projects in advanced development. The Amsterdam-based company will be the Dutch co-producer on Mammal, the latest feature from Irish director Rebecca Daly (The Other Side Of Sleep), being made through Fastnet Films.

Meanwhile, Rinkel is pushing ahead with In God’s Name, directed by Arne Toonen. The film tells the story of a playboy priest, as interested in drugs and woman as he is in God.

Rinkel’s recent feature Lucia de B., directed by Paula van der Oest, has been sold to several territories in advance of its ilikely international premiere at an autumn festival. (International sales are handled by Fortissimo.)

The company is also preparing In From The Cold, a new spy drama from Czech director Martin Krejci. Previously known as Martha’s Son, this tells the story of a mother whose child was born out of an affair with an SS soldier. She was forced to give up the baby but years later, goes searching for him.

Meanwhile, Rinkel is developing political thriller Hamming, to be directed by Arno Dierickx.