Still: Gerlach - Aliona van der Horst & Luuk Bouwman

Gerlach* (the new film from Aliona van der Horst and Luuk Bouwman which has its world premiere in IDFA) has unusual origins. For many years, van der Horst’s father used to stop off at a farm shop not far from Schiphol Airport to buy the delicious potatoes and strawberries that the small-time farmer Gerlach van Beinum grew there. 

“30 years ago, my father befriended Gerlach,” van der Horst remembers. She also grew to know him well, and would often invite him to see her films (documentaries like Boris Ryzhy and Voices Of Bam). She found him far more perceptive about her work than many professional critics. “He is a very intelligent man with a very thoughtful way of commenting.”

Gerlach is one of the few remaining small scale farmers tending their own land in the Netherlands. His land is in a sought-after area close to Amsterdam. Big businesses like McDonald’s, the airlines and the Dutch government itself are always trying to turf him out of his home. With the assistance of his brother, an engineer, he has fought multiple lawsuits to keep his farm intact. Van der Horst had longed planned to make a film about him but kept putting the project off. Then she met fellow director Luuk Bouwman (director of All Against All*, on which she was a script coach). The pair decided to collaborate together on the documentary and immediately set to work.

One of the attractions of the project was that the directors could turn up whenever they wanted. Gerlach would make no fuss about their presence. If one director was away, the other could make sure they didn’t miss anything important. They would often shoot in the kitchen with the farmer and his close friends. “It’s a film about really small things,” van der Horst suggests. She and Bouwman took inspiration from the work of US author Elizabeth Strout (best known for Olive Kitteridge). Strout is renowned for her closely focused portraits of lonely, small town Americans: “forgotten people you need to really know to appreciate,” as van der Horst describes the novelist’s characters. She wanted to portray Gerlach with similar affection and attention.

Gerlach is a lovable and humorous character. He is suffering from an aggressive form of rheumatism which leaves him in constant pain and causes him to stoop - but he never complains. Often, the filmmakers will hold shots of their subject’s face.

“The mystery of a person lies in the face…and he was OK with us filming him. You can read many things in his face but there is also a mystery which you can’t quite grasp,” van der Horst observes. She adds that the farmer is from a generation who didn’t show their emotions easily - you therefore have to study his expressions to know what he is feeling.

The filmmakers joke that van der Horst provided the film’s lyrical flourishes while Bouwman (who will be awarded the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Documentary Stipend at this year’s IDFA) was responsible for the earthiness and the jokes.

“I enjoyed a lot being in the kitchen and having a feeling for the rhythm of the conversations,” Bouwman says of the documentary’s many interludes in which Gerlach and his farmer friends put the world to rights. “Luuk had a tremendous sense of humour,” van der Horst responds of her collaborator’s eye for the absurd. 

The old farmer has to deal with the illness of his best pal, Rinus, but that doesn’t get in the way of their philosophising and chatter in the slightest.

The directors worked “for months” on getting the edit right. They were determined to find what Bouwman calls “the right balance between story and feeling.”

Gerlach started as a short documentary for TV but soon grew in scope and ambition, turning into a feature. “At some point, we found out in the editing that we wanted a slower pace,” Bouwman says of the beguiling rhythm in the expanded film (which will be released in The Netherlands by Cinema Delicatessen). Syndicado is handling world sales. 

And, yes, Gerlach himself will be in Amsterdam for the premiere - and is bound to give the directors a thorough critique of their work afterwards.

Gerlach is produced by Docmakers.

IDFA takes place on November 8 - 19. For an overview of Dutch docs selected for IDFA 2023, inlcuding screening schedule, click here. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund