'He’s totally different', his mate Janus says a little shocked. 'Just as Bruce Willis was totally different in The Sixth Sense from in Die Hard. He’s just not the old Ronnie anymore!'
The Amsterdam crook Ronnie (neck brace, large horn-rimmed glasses and a considerable belly) and his bodyguard/chauffeur Janus (sideburns, 1950s shirts) roam through the Friesian town of Dokkum, looking for a man with Dokkum's coat of arms tattooed on his wrist.
Then we see a flashback of 'the old Ronnie', a hardened crook with several obsessive neuroses. The eccentricities of Ronnie and Janus are intercut with those of Eduardo, a young asylum seeker from Angola who is in the refugee centre in Dokkum. Because Eduardo is unable to talk about the horrors he lived through, he sees his chances of a residence permit go up in smoke.
The Resurrection of a Bastard is the feature debut by Amsterdam artist, graphic novelist and filmmaker Guido van Driel, based on his own graphic novel Om mekaar in Dokkum from 2004. The dialogues are challenging, the photography beautiful. Yorick van Wageningen is wonderful as the transforming Ronnie; the Dutch actor Jeroen Willems, who died on 3 December 2012, plays an impressive supporting role as a merciless gangster. Official Opening Film IFFR 2013.
- Director
- Guido van Driel
- Premiere
- World premiere
- Countries of production
- Netherlands, Belgium
- Year
- 2013
- Festival Edition
- IFFR 2013
- Length
- 90'
- Medium
- DCP
- International title
- The Resurrection of a Bastard
- Language
- Dutch
- Producer
- Frans van Gestel
- Production Company
- Topkapi Films
- Sales
- Topkapi Films
- Screenplay
- Bas Blokker, Guido van Driel, based on a graphic novel by Guido van Driel
- Cinematography
- Lennert Hillege
- Editor
- Alain Dessauvage
- Production Design
- Floris Vos
- Sound Design
- Peter Warnier
- Cast
- Jeroen Willems, Leny Breederveld, Yorick van Wageningen
- Local Distributor
- A-Film Distribution
- Website
- http://www.topkapifilms.nl/our-films/the-resurrection-of-a-bastard/