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30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025

Everything is relative: De Idylle by Aaron Rookus

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Dutch filmmaker Aaron Rookus is in the Big Screen Competition at IFFR 2025 with his sophomore feature De Idylle, which was presented in IFFR Pro’s co-production market CineMart and work-in-progress platform Darkroom. He discusses with producer Maarten van der Ven, who also reflects on his participation on Rotterdam Lab as the programme hits its 25 anniversary.

In Aaron Rookus’s complex and highly entertaining De Idylle (Idyllic), we encounter four generations of one family, all of whom, for one reason or another, have developed an interest in death. These range from 10-year-old Timo, who is checking off his bucket list, believing he only has one week left to live, to grandmother Joke, who is tired of life and just wants to give it all up.

In the middle, there is opera diva Annika who, after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, reimagines her life in a dull marriage in a suburban house, continually encountering different iterations of herself. Meanwhile, Annika’s brother Victor is new to the queer dating scene, but even he must make a bitter eulogy at his father’s funeral, who has bizarrely died on the same day as grandmother Joke.

The story is equally humorous, inventive and bizarre, and it has a very personal undertow for writer-director Rookus.

“I guess all the characters are somehow perspectives of what I’ve already gone through”

“When I was 23, I had cancer, so at a very early age I was faced with my mortality,” the filmmaker tells IFFR Pro. “During the years after that, I realised tons of different things – what is important in life and what is not. Everything is relative. Your career is not important. It is friends and family that are. It’s the basic stuff, but I truly learned it. So I wanted to make a film about this experience.”’

Rookus survived the cancer and is now in his early 40s, healthy and with two kids. It was inevitable that his film, therefore, would itself be a multi-generational affair, with themes of self-knowledge and self-fulfilment at its root. “I guess all the characters are somehow perspectives of what I’ve already gone through,” the director stresses.

“Beautiful opera-esque structure with people from different generations”

“I think what Aaron did really well was to compose this beautiful opera-esque structure with people from different generations confronted with death or other important life markers, and that they have to make a choice or at least live with the consequences of that moment,” confirms producer Maarten van der Ven.

 “I think De Idylle fits perfectly in this competition”

For Rookus, the selection for IFFR’s Big Screen Competition is a “happy home… It’s what we aimed for because the film just goes in so many directions, as well as visually. I think De Idylle fits perfectly in this competition.”

This is the first film that producer Van der Ven is world-premiering at IFFR since founding his company Studio Ruba with Layla Meijman five years ago (although the company world-premiered Zara Dwinger’s superb Kiddo in Berlinale Generation in 2023.) Van der Ven is also producing Dwinger’s next feature project as well as the new project by Ena Sendijarević (Sweet Dreams, Take Me Somewhere Nice).

The producer has maintained close relationships with IFFR Pro throughout his career. In 2011 he was an alumnus of Rotterdam Lab, which celebrates its 25th birthday this year. De Idylle was presented at CineMart in 2020 and as a Darkroom work-in-progress presentation in 2024. The company also presented Joost van Hezik’s feature project Becoming Dubois at Boost NL in 2022. For Van der Ven, IFFR Pro delivers a “holistic” experience.

“As long as you just start talking on a personal level and make personal connections, you will meet and see these people who have a very good nose for talent and quality again and again”

So what advice would he offer to first-time ‘Labbies’ (Rotterdam Lab emerging producers) in attendance in 2025? First and foremost, enjoy it, he advises, but be prepared. “You get to meet a lot of excellent experts and you get to feel that this is the start of your international co-production career,” he underlines. “As long as you just start talking on a personal level and make personal connections, you will meet and see these people who have a very good nose for talent and quality again and again at CineMart, or at Berlinale Talents or at EAVE or ACE. And when you know them [better], then you can begin to build something of quality.”

De Idylle is produced by Studio Ruba in co-production with Belgium (Polar Bear) and Estonia (Allfilm) and was supported by the Netherlands Film Fund, Netherlands Production Incentive, BNNVARA, CoBO fund, Creative Europe Media, Estonian Film Institute, Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) and the Belgian Tax shelter. Paradiso Filmed Entertainment will release De Idylle in Dutch cinemas 13 March 2025.

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