For the first time in Dutch film history, an animation production has a chance to win one or more Golden Calves. grunt scored no less than five nominations, including for the best film of the year. It is also the only public film in that category. Many potential Calf winners will not tell the average viewer anything.
For the stop motion animation grunt, about the friendship between a girl and a piglet, was fiddled with for years in an Arnhem studio with fabric, fleece, cardboard and polystyrene foam. On a productive day, exactly five seconds of film was realized there. The press praised including the reviewer of this site. grunt also competed in the Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Sound, and Best Visual Design categories.
The youth production still did reasonable business at the cinema box office, the other titles that competed for prizes on Friday at the annual Golden Calf Gala, the Dutch equivalent of the Oscars, barely made a dent in a pack of butter. The psychological war film Do Not Hestitate, about soldiers who are traumatized during a peace mission in Afghanistan, has the most nominations: no fewer than eight. The little-visited arthouse titles are also awarded for ‘best film’ No. 10 (by Alex van Warmerdam) and Pink Moon nominated, as well as narcosis which will have its national premiere at the end of next month. This thriller with Thekla Reuten was also recently nominated as the entry for the Oscars.
It is also striking that My Best Friend Anne Frank has to make do with only one nomination, the one for best film music. The acclaimed protagonists Aiko Beemsterboer and Josephine Arendsen were overlooked. Who did not disappear under the radar is Julia Akkermans, who won a nomination for two roles: for her leading role in the film Pink Moon and for her supporting role in the drama series Dirty Lines. In the more technical categories, Moloch the good. The horror film with Sallie Harmsen has a chance to win four Calves (including for the best camera work).
For feature films and full-length documentaries that premiere at the Netherlands Film Festival, the main producer and distributor determine whether the production will be registered for the Golden Calf Competition in 2022 or 2023. The opening film of the current festival, Sea Of Time, will join next year. That also applies to the recently released Soof 3 and the documentary Wolf.
The ceremony can be seen live on filmfestival.nl and RTV Utrecht on Friday at 7:04 p.m. on NPO 1, preceded by a special broadcast of Khalid & Sophie in collaboration with BNNVara.
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