_{Spotless by Emma Branderhorst}

Spotless* (produced by IJswater Films and sold by Hidde de Vries’ Kapitein Kort) deals with the problem of ‘period poverty’ in dramatised form through the experiences of Ruby, a 15-year-old girl who does not have money for tampons. Her mother loves her dearly and would love to help but is so caught up in her own financial problems that she does not notice her daughter’s plight.

“First of all, I am a fiction maker,” the young director explains why she did not tackle her subject through documentary or reportage. “When I heard about period poverty, I could not really imagine how this would feel for me as a girl and how it would affect your life… to make this problem more clear to people who see this film, I needed to tell a story that is really close to my heart.”

Spotless is set in a council estate in the Bijlmer district of Amsterdam. “What I was really trying to do was choose one environment where we were going to shoot it all. I really wanted it to be a story that you really believe in,” the director explains. The food banks we see on screen are real food banks and some of the actors are non-professionals from the area.

Branderhorst cites the work of British social realist director Ken Loach as the inspiration for her hard-hitting but humane approach. 

One of the biggest challenges was in the editing. The filmmakers were trying to tell a deeply personal and very intimate story about one young woman while encapsulating a very big subject.

Newcomer Alicia Prinsen plays the teenager Ruby. “She is a non-actor. She has never acted in a film before [but] she is a great talent,” the director notes of her young lead. 

Prinsen was chosen after an exhaustive casting process which involved more than 60 candidates. “She was really tough but also quite introverted. She had the mix that I was looking for.”

In her films, Branderhorst often tells the stories of “developing young women” at transitional moments in their lives. Her graduation short Under The Skin*, which also screened in the Berlinale, was about bullying among girls and the desperate desire to belong to a group. She is now preparing Ma Mére et Moi, a partly autobiographical short which will look at mother-daughter relationships. “It is about a mother and daughter who have to let each other go but it is also about a girl developing.”

The precocious young director is also developing what may be her first feature, My Mother’s Vodka Orange*, about kids dealing with their parents’ alcoholism.

Sales agent Kapitein Kort is working hard to get Spotless shown in schools and as a part of educational programmes. “That is going really well,” the director enthuses. “People really like the film. Even men were so touched by the movie… honestly, I did not know that it would turn out like this.”

Period poverty is now a subject on politicians’ agenda across Europe. In Scotland, a decision was taken in late 2020 to make period products free. Branderhorst would like this to happen in the Netherlands too. She points out that she is an artist, not an activist, but still hopes that the film will be part of an ongoing debate that will eventually change the lives of young women for the better.

For more information on Berlinale, click here. Also, be sure to check out the full Dutch line-up at the festival and European Film Market here.
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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund