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30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025

David Verbeek

David VERBEEK (1980, Netherlands) studied film, photography and philosophy at the New School University in New York, and film directing at the Netherlands Film Academy, where he graduated in 2005. During his studies he completed his first feature, Beat (2004), which was selected for IFFR. After graduating, he left for China. His second feature, Shanghai Trance, was selected for the Tiger Awards Competition in 2008. In 2010, R U There was selected for the prestigious programme section Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival. How to Describe a Cloud was nominated for the Big Screen Award in 2013, as well as a Gold Hugo at Chicago International Film Festival. Full Contact (2015) premiered in Toronto and was also nominated for a Gold Hugo.

Filmography

Beat (2004), Yu-Lan (2004, short), alt.suicideholiday.net (2005, short), Melody Z (2007, short), Shanghai Trance (2008), R U There (2010), Club Zeus (2011), Immortelle (2013, short), How to Describe a Cloud (2013), Full Contact (2015), An Impossibly Small Object (2018), Trapped in the City of a Thousand Mountains (2018, short doc), Dead & Beautiful (2021)

More info: David Verbeek

David Verbeek at IFFR

  • Dead & Beautiful

    After a weird night, five super-rich friends find out they are vampires. Panic! Is this really what they have become?

    • Limelight

  • Full Contact

    An introverted soldier enters his own tormented subconscious, respectively portrayed as an island and a boxing school, desperately looking for full co

  • Melody Z

    Melancholy portrait of two moths in hypermodern Shanghai.

    • Short: As Long As It Takes

  • Shanghai Trance

    Young Dutch director made an (almost) entirely Chinese film. In a city where everything is new, an outsider is in any case no more out of place than t

    • VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

  • Immortelle

    Experimental dance film in which two ex-lovers deal with their relationship’s collapse. While the body dances, the heavy heart follows.

    • Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films

  • How to Describe a Cloud

    A young woman in Taipei is confronted with the blindness of her mother who is convinced she has a sixth sense. Shot with little facilities, but it is

    • Spectrum
    • The Big Screen Award

  • Beat

    Making a minimal low budget DV feature in Rotterdam. About a modern yuppy’s burn-out, urban alienation and other issues we mainly know from Asian cine

    • main programme features

  • Full Contact

    An introverted soldier enters his own tormented subconscious, respectively portrayed as an island and a boxing school, desperately looking for full co

    • Limelight
    • Voices

  • Club Zeus

    Made as a guerilla project while waiting for finance for R U There. Verbeek, a Tiger candidate in 2008 with Shanghai Trance, proves that his creative

    • RotT

  • David Verbeek Screening