Rolf de Heer

Rolf de Heer has been making feature films for thirty years now, and in that time he’s managed to complete fourteen of them (there are numbers of others that haven’t been completed, one way or the other). The films are usually low of budget but high in impact; they generally have something to say about the human condition despite conventional wisdom that it’s wiser to the contrary; and, more often than not, each succeeding film is quite, quite different from the previous.

With those fourteen films, however, Rolf has had some measure of success: four different films in Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival (including the Jury Prize for Ten Canoes in Un Certain Regard); two films in Competition at the Venice Film Festival (including Bad Boy Bubby, which won both the Jury Prize and the Critics’ Prize); films selected for Berlin, Toronto, Telluride, London.

He’s also had a measure of failure with some of them, the odd one or two disappearing without a trace, even though for someone, somewhere, it’s their favorite film of all time…and some of these films have in fact turned a small profit, a rare thing in the film world.