Kauwboy
Hilal - ages 13+
Boudewijn Koole / Feature Narrative / Netherlands, The / 2012 / 81 min / Colour / HDCAM
In Dutch / Arabic, English subtitles
Interests: Family, Youth
Qatar Premiere
Synopsis
In Competition
Ten-year-old Jojo lives with his emotionally detached father in a rural area of the Netherlands. In stark contrast with his father’s harsh and taciturn attitude, Jojo is a firecracker. His energy and exuberance are his way to fight loneliness and cope with the absence of his country-singer mother, who is on tour in the United States. From time to time, Jojo talks to her over the phone when his father can’t hear him – but something doesn’t seem quite right.
Jojo finds solace in an unexpected friendship with an abandoned baby jackdaw that he keeps hidden from his father. As his mother’s birthday approaches, Jojo decides he wants to do something special to celebrate, but this triggers his father’s anger. Eventually, father and son will have to face their pain, and find a way to break down the wall that divides them.
Winner of two awards at Berlinale 2012, Boudewjin Koole’s feature-length debut is at once a moving coming-of-age drama, an emotional character study, and an impressionistic portrait of the challenging relationship between a father and his son as they struggle to regain the happiness and tenderness they have somehow lost along the way.
About the Directors
Boudewijn Koole (1965) studied Industrial Design at the University of Delft and subsequently trained himself as a documentary filmmaker. Illusions are the central theme in most of his work, which often focuses on children or young people with whom he develops a close working relationship. He has said, ‘film is illusion, a game of light which confronts us with our hidden desires’. Koole also works as an editor on a VPRO television youth series.
Credits
- Director
- Boudewijn Koole
- Screenwriter
- Boudewijn Koole, Jolein Laarman
- Producer
- Jan van der Zanden, Wilant Boekelman
- Editor
- Gys Zevenbergen
- Music
- Helge Slikker
- Cinematographer
- Daniel Bouquet
- Sales Company
- Delphis Films Inc.
- Production Company
- Waterland film
- Cast
- Rick Lens, Loek Peters, Susan Radder, Hüseyin Cahit Ölmez, Ricky Koole