Best Dutch history movies

The Lion of Flanders (1985)

A tale centered on the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302 where the Flemish rank and file won a major victory over the glorious French knights.

Roman Tragedies (2021)

In Roman tragedies, Ivo van Hove and Jan Versweyveld have created a unique arena in which Shakespeare speaks about our time more than ever and the political game in all its facets.

Gemmeker (2020)

In 1948, Albert Gemmeker, the former commander of the Dutch concentration camp Westerbork, finds himself in an interrogation room opposite a man unknown to him. It soon turns out that Gemmeker's interrogator has a personal reason to force him to confess about his war past and the transportation of 80.000 Jews to the extermination camps.

The Silent Raid (1962)

In 1944 Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, a band of Dutch resistance fighters plot to covertly rescue dozens of compatriots from the local Nazi prison.

Max Havelaar (1976)

An idealistic Dutch colonial officer posted to Indonesia in the 19th century is cohvinced that he can make the kinds of changes that will actually help the local people he is in charge of, but circumstances soon make him realize just how out of touch he really is, and it doesn't take long for things to go from bad to worse.

The Black Tulip (1921)

In 17th century Holland, a faction of royalists is scheming to restore the monarchy and jail the De Witt brothers, who control the Republic. At the same time Tulip Fever is raging, and bulb-grower Cornelis van Baerle tries to obtain the secret of black tulips. Van Baerle will soon find himself threatened by radical royalists and rival bulb-grower Isaac van Boxtel.

De Punt (2009)

More than 30 years after the dramatic ending of a train hijack five people involved meet each other on a television show. Starting point is the death of the only female hijacker: Noor. One by one the five enter the studio. Each with their own expectations or hidden agenda.

Gabriel (2020)

At the end of World War II, a wounded German soldier, disguised as a Canadian, ends up in the midst of a hiding Jewish family.

Into Thin Air (2013)

1992: The undocumented Ghanaian Agymah (50) lives a secluded life as a cook in the outskirts of Amsterdam. When the ambitious dreamer Nina (12) arrives, Agymah is effectively forced to become her guardian. Nina drives Agymah crazy with her callous way of life and her eagerness to make contact with the outside world. Gradually, though, Agymah comes to understand that this is exactly what he has been escaping from and he realizes he must choose for life instead of waiting for death. When El Al flight 1862 crashes into their building, Agymah goes on a desperate search for the girl that gave him a reason to live. Into Thin Air is the first film based on the Bijlmer crash. It tells a human story of an event that has been branded into the collective memory of The Netherlands. Officially there were 43 fatalities, but because of the large number of illegal residents the actual figure will never be known.

The Moving True Story of a Woman Ahead of Her Time (2001)

Frisian-spoken costume drama about the turbulent marriage between a writer and a socialist politician.

Mother Dao, the Turtlelike (1995)

In a span of ninety minutes the film aims to show how the Netherlands administered its colony as a colonial enterprise and what the relations were like at the time. The usual commentary has been omitted and in its place poems and songs in Bahasa Indonesia have been included in a digital sound composition. In Mother Dao the Turtlelike, the viewer sees how the colonial machinery in the 1920s was implanted in a world so different from Western Europe.

All Against All (2019)

This richly illustrated historical documentary investigates the mechanism of nationalist feelings that radicalise. It shows how fascism was on the rise even a decade before the founding of the NSB, due to a number of anti-democratic initiatives led by a millionaire with a predilection for one-legged women, a market vendor, a cleric, and an artist. Historians, writers and collectors of fascist curios reveal how an initially marginal and fragmented movement grew into a radical populist party.

The Cool Lakes of Death (1982)

Hedwig, a young wealthy woman growing up in the straight-jacket of bourgeois morality in the Victorian era, descends into madness after years of sexual repression and tragedy.

Truus' Children (2020)

Before and during WWII, the Dutch war hero Truus Wijsmuller saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children. She was a woman so convinced of her mission that she flew to Vienna to negotiate a deal with Adolf Eichmann to let 10.000 mostly Jewish children leave their birth countries and flee to England and the Netherlands. In this documentary, 23 of the children look back on the extraordinary events.

Rietveld Houses: A piece of furniture to live in (2024)

In 2024, the iconic Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Gerrit Rietveld designed and built the house in close collaboration with his secret lover and creative partner Truus Schröder. Rietveld himself did not build his houses for eternity; he thought a life cycle of 50 years was sufficient. But the current owners of houses designed by Rietveld think differently about this. They pull out all the stops to renovate and preserve their Rietveld houses.

Indisch Zwijgen (2022)

Three young artists delve into their family past to break the generational silence about the Dutch East Indies history.

First Kill (2001)

Veterans of the Vietnam War tell about their experiences. The disasters but also the glorious moments of war. The central figure in the documentary is the scenario writer of Full Metal Jacket, Michael Herr. The veterans describe how it felt to kill for the first time and how those feelings still haunt them.

The Outsider (1979)

Michael Flaherty (Craig Wasson), an American Vietnam veteran of Irish descent, returns to Belfast to join the cause of his grandfather, Seamus (Sterling Hayden). Soon he finds that he is not as welcomed in his home country as he imagined he would be. Even worse, he's the target of an IRA assassination plot designed to make the British forces look bad in order to elicit financial support from wealthy Americans.

The van Paemel Family (1986)

The family patriarch Van Paemel is a farmer on baron de Wilde's estate. His mild-mannered son Désire is accidentally shot during a hunting party on the estate and remains an invalid. Eduard, the eldest son, is a member of the socialist workers' movement and involved in strike actions in the city. Against her father's wishes, his daughter Cordule starts an affair with the poacher Masco. His youngest daughter, Romanie, is forced to work as a domestic servant at the castle, where she is seduced by Maurice, the baron's son and heir, and becomes pregnant. When the youngest son Kamiel also has to leave the farm because he is drafted into the army, the lack of workers on Van Paemel's farm becomes critical. As a result, the family is evicted from their home because they cannot pay the rent. Three of the children emigrate to the USA, one becomes a nun and one dies, until only the farmer and his wife remain.

A Life in Suitcases (2005)

Follows Tulse Luper as he is swept into the ill-fortuned tides of the 20th century and forced to spend his life in a succession of imprisonments.

The Bitter Herb (1985)

This film is about the Jewish girl Sara and the ruin of her family during World War II. Her parents have to live in the Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam, but later they are arrested and deported. Sara decides to flee with her brother and his girlfriend to Palestine. Based on the book by Marga Minco.

The Mark of the Beast (1980)

In 1928 in the northern part of the Netherlands, a man has an affair with the wife of one of his friends (who is in jail at the time). Because she abandons her children to move in with him, the police are sent to arrest her. This leads to a dramatic confrontation.

AYOR (2021)

In 1970, during the annual Dutch national commemoration of those fallen in World War II, two men try to make a statement against gay discrimination. In the moments before and after the incident, their doubt, fear and firm belief becomes clear.

Boerenpsalm (1989)

This heimat-movie after a novel by Felix Timmermans is about the at first sight idyllic, but actually tragical life of Wortel, a peasant in a pre-war Belgian village, who has a hard time accepting the curate’s assurance it’s all part of God’s grand plan when his loved ones keep coming to harm.

Het Ontstaan van het Land Suriname (1998)

Angels of Death (1998)

The Soviet General Vlasov remains one of the most intriguing, yet least known figures of World War II. In 1942, the German war machine had come to a halt near the Russian city of Leningrad. The Russian Second Assault Army, led by General Vlasov, fights itself to death in an effort to break the German siege. Their general is captured and later defects to the Germans. In ANGELS OF DEATH we experience the fate of General Vlasov’s army as we hear the personal accounts of those who died in the massacre through their poems, letters and photographs.

Vroeger op de Boerderij (1961)

Van rijdende PCC tot concervenblik (1993)

Aletta Jacobs, Het Hoogste Streven (1995)

Donna: Women in Revolt (1980)

The story of those Italian women who, for eighty years, have fought against power in all its forms.