Veteran Dutch producer Stienette Bosklopper, owner and MD of Circe Film, is turning screenwriter and has written two projects already in advanced development.

Bosklopper, whose credits include Wolfsbergen and Brownian Movement, will be at this week’s IFFR CineMart in Rotterdam in a dual capacity - as screenwriter and producer of Nanouk Leopold’s new feature, Cobain.

The €1.6m film, which has already received backing from the Netherlands Film Fund, is being coproduced with Waterland Film.

“It’s part of a personal development you have at a certain stage in your career,” the producer says of her foray into screenwriting.

“I had been working with a lot of writers and directors. Somehow, there was an urge to contribute on a different level. To my own amazement, it is going very well. It comes quite naturally and I have the feeling that I will be continuing doing this.”

Cobain is the story of a teenage boy with a drug addicted mother who has just become pregnant. The boy is determined to save his unborn brother. Shooting is planned for this autumn. Cinemien is already on board as distributor and A Private View is the Belgian co-producer.

The second screenplay on which Bosklopper is working is Avrupa, a collaboration with fast rising young writer-director Sacha Polak.

The film is an epic drama about a Turkish family who leave their home to build a new life in the Netherlands. It is being developed as both a six-part TV series and a feature film. It is being developed with Molly Malene Stensgaard, best known as Lars Von Trier’s editor on such films as Nymphomaniac and Melancholia.

Sacha Polak also has another new project at CineMart, the English language film Vita & Virginia, about the relationship between writers (and lovers) Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West.

The €6m feature, being made by Mirror Productions and Viking Film, is scripted by Eileen Atkins.

Other projects being developed at Circe Films include David Verbeek’s new feature Goeree, a story set in a fishing village during an economic downturn.

“It’s a typical Bruno Dumont-style (drama) about youngsters in the south of Holland, their life, drugs, the church,” said Bosklopper.

Circe is also the Dutch co-producer on Niles Atallah’s Rey, about a French lawyer who sets out to become king of Patagonia. This is produced by Lucie Kalmar of Mômerade (France). 

Meanwhile, Circe is about to go into production next month on Martijn Maria Smits’ Waldstille (working title) about a man returning home to an uncertain welcome after time in prison for causing the death of his girlfriend in a drink driving incident.

The film, now fully financed, is being supported through the new Dutch cash rebate incentive. The distributor is Contact Film.

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