“The North”, the new feature film from Dutch director/producer Bart Schrijver has been shortlisted for the European Film Awards. The film has enjoyed an incredible response in a very short space of time. This year alone, the film has enjoyed a theatrical run in Luxembourg, Belgium, and Schrijver’s native The Netherlands, where the film has already been viewed by over 115,000 people. Making it only the second Dutch film this year to achieve this. The film also hit the number one spot in the Dutch Arthouse Top 30 for seven weeks.
The news of the film’s shortlisting comes shortly after the team at Tuesday Studio announced distribution deals across a number of territories. This includes with Lumiere for Belgium, Tull Stories for the UK and ROI, Wanted Cinema for Italy, Polyfilm for Austria, Limelight Distribution for New Zealand and Australia, and with Gusto Entertainment for The Netherlands.
A trailer for the film can be found here.
Synopsis
A decade after being best friends and roommates, Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido) set out on a 600-kilometer hike through the Scottish Highlands. Following the West Highland way and The Cape Wrath Trail, they spend 30 days together in nature – hoping to rekindle their once-powerful friendship.
But while Chris remains preoccupied with work and life back at home, Lluis is determined to finish the trail to prove he can do it. The solitude and silence of the Highlands forces them to confront harsh truths about themselves, their friendship, and what it truly means to stand still and listen.
Written and directed by Schrijver, which he co-produced with Arnold Janssen and Tom Holscher, was made in a very unconventional way, not to dissimilar to that of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Academy Award winning feature “The Revenant”. “The North” was made for a mere 75,000 euros and with a cast and crew of only eight people, who hiked together across 300 kilometres, slept in tents and carried all the equipment they needed across the mountains.
Speaking about the film’s journey to date, Schrijver has said:
“Being on the shortlist of the European Film Awards is something we never expected. This film was a labour of love, making films and being out in nature. I think that enjoyment and passion is what shines through in the film. We are very grateful that the European Film Academy selected us among all these other great European titles.”
The team at Tuesday Studio, the production company behind the film, originally planned to simply sell the film online on their own TVOD website, however, after a glowing four-star review from The Guardian, everything changed. More glowing coverage followed, including pieces from De Staandard and South Africa’s Sunday Times, among others. The ball kept rolling and landed at the doorsteps of the European Film Academy, who shortlisted the project in the Feature Film category.
Alongside “The North”, the team created a documentary: “True North”. The documentary follows the crew as they embark on this grand journey. Making a film is already very hard in normal conditions. Making a film while also hiking 300+ kilometres, sleeping in tents every night, and carrying 30+ kilos on your back up a mountain, is a different challenge altogether. But the documentary is not just a “behind the scenes”. It doesn’t only show how the film was made, but also what it is like to hike through Scotland.
“True North” can be viewed here.
Schrijver began his career while studying architecture, launching his first film company, creating animations. This quickly expanded into live-action filmmaking. Using his first short films as his film school, he directed five short films in his first year as a fiction director. Since making the leap from short films to feature-length projects proved challenging, he co-founded a new production company, Tuesday Studio, with Janssen and Holscher. With Tuesday Studio, they explore new ways of financing, producing, and distributing films.
In 2022, he launched his first film with Tuesday Studio: “Human Nature”, a film based on his 700 km hike in Arctic Norway. Bart combines his love for nature with his passion for filmmaking. To date, he has created 12 films and has hiked more than 5,000 kilometres.
