It is the day after the world premiere of Arcadia at the Ostend Film Festival. Cast and crew walked the red carpet ahead of the screening of the first two episodes of the eight-part series. Tim Oliehoek (44, flanked by dog Lola) looks back on the evening with satisfaction in an Amsterdam café: “The series also holds up very well on the big screen.”
The director, who garnered success with series like The Case Menten (about the hunt for SS man Pieter Menten in the post-war Netherlands) and Hendrik Groen’s secret diary (about life in a nursing home), worked on the international production for almost two years. He was asked for the ambitious collaboration project between KRO-NCRV, the Flemish VRT and the German public broadcaster. For one million euros per episode, Oliehoek was allowed to create a futuristic world in which humanity lives according to a points system after a major, undefined disaster. If you want to make use of all the facilities in society, you must live a healthy life and do your best to be an exemplary citizen.
„Arcadia is something I had never done before,” confesses Oliehoek. “But that made my heart beat faster. Bee Menten and Henry Green I also thought at first: what is my connection to the subject? I have not lived through those post-war years and I am not ready for a life in a nursing home myself. But then you go looking for the link that you do feel connected to.”
Urgent
In the series, a Flemish-Dutch family gets into trouble when father Pieter (Gene Bervoets) cheats with the points system without the knowledge of his wife (Monic Hendrickx). As a result, he gets ‘Het Schild’ on his roof, the government organization that ensures strict compliance with the rules, and he causes great conflict within his own family. “It is a science fiction story,” explains Oliehoek. “But it’s about family relationships. I immediately felt the question arise: what would I do in such a situation? As a result, the story suddenly came very close.”
Although the development of Arcadia even before the corona pandemic started, the director also saw more and more similarities between the series and reality during the lockdowns: “The story suddenly felt very urgent when unvaccinated people in the Netherlands were no longer allowed to go to catering establishments and cinemas. When can you, as a government, impose such restrictions on your citizens? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a George Orwell-like society?”
In the world of Arcadia Oliehoek sees fragments of how the state is already organized in China or Russia. “I don’t think it will get that far in Europe anytime soon, and certainly not in the Netherlands – we are much too stubborn for that,” he chuckles. “But the discussion about the tension between how many rules a government imposes and how much freedom you keep yourself, I find very exciting. People will always need an outlet, you cannot force someone to always choose what is good for you and your family. Then it becomes a very conservative, boring life.”
Read also: In ‘Arcadia’ every visual detail has been thought through
Recycle world
Oliehoek wanted to make sure that the form did not overshadow the content. “Even though we had to create a whole world that didn’t actually exist,” he explains. For weeks, the director traveled with production designer Kurt Loyens to locations in Belgium, France and Germany that had a futuristic look. “We envisioned a kind of recycling world, in which all major buildings and factories have been wiped out and a new world has been built with the equipment that remained. Brutalism was a common thread in choosing our locations.” Filming was also done in the Netherlands: this is how viewers will probably recognize Radio Kootwijk.
On the set itself, the director felt no extra pressure during the 83 shooting days because he led ‘the most expensive Flemish series ever’, as the Belgian media Arcadia announced. “But if you look at what was described in the screenplay, it was actually made for a small budget,” Oliehoek laughs. “Ultimately you have the same discussions as on the set of a cheaper project: how many extras can we hire, can we use a crane for that shot or not? You always have more ideas than you can budget for.”
It was an interesting experience to work with an international crew – in the Netherlands, the filmmaker has gathered a solid core over the years with whom he usually works. “The Flemish are a bit more probing, I sometimes really had to encourage them to share what they actually thought. At the same time, they are extremely well prepared. In May, during pre-production, for example, they wanted to know exactly how we were going to shoot a certain shot a year later.”
In retrospect, the director found it quite tough to work continuously abroad for more than a year and a half. “While shooting you think about nothing but the series,” he explains. “But I was happy that we could go home with all the Dutch every weekend. Especially with such an intensive, long project, it is good if you can turn yourself off now and then and hang out on the couch with your loved one and the dog for a weekend.”