What makes the success of Regret all the more remarkable is that its subject matter is, seemingly, very bleak indeed. This is a film about a teenage boy bullied at school - and about the remorse his friends feel at not having stood up for him. Like the cancer-themed Cool Kids Don’t Cry, Regret is based on a novel by Carry Slee. Producer and director Dave Schram acknowledges that the film turned out to be sadly topical.

“During the shooting, there was a boy named Tim Ribberink who killed himself,” Schram recalls of the schoolboy whose death was covered widely in the Dutch media at around the time the movie went into production. Inevitably, the filmmakers were asked if they were making their film in direct response to the Ribberink case. In fact, the film had had a lengthy gestation. It was the first of her books that Slee had wanted to see filmed.

Dutch Culture Minister Jet Bussemaker was at the premiere. She told Schram that she felt the film was “important for everyone” and encouraged screenings for school kids. Newspapers also encouraged the film to be shown in schools. “This was an important issue. It was a famous book. I don’t think it was because of my quality in making a movie,” the director says of the film’s success, downplaying his own open contribution.

Schram, co-founder of production company Shooting Star, is one of the most prolific figures in the Dutch film industry. Quite apart from his own films as a director, he produces films for directors from Dick Maas to Jeroen Krabbé. He works very closely with his wife, renowned writer and director Maria Peters. There is further filmmaking talent in the family in the form of his daughter, Tessa Schram, whose feature directorial debut Pijnstillers he is producing, and his son Quinten who starred as a child in Peter Bell (2002) and is now carving out a career as a movie composer.

Look through Schram’s filmography and you’ll see that he spent the first half of his career as a producer on films like the Oscar-nominated Daens and Krabbé’s Left Luggage. Only relatively late on did he turn to directing. That, he suggests, was a simple quirk of fate. He studied directing at the Dutch Film Academy and had always planned to call the shots himself. “I loved to produce so I forgot to direct!” is how he describes the beginning of his career.

As a producer, Schram made low budget pictures and films that cost several million euros. He had his share of flops but also some very big hits (notably Little Crumb which attracted 1.3 million viewers.) Then, in middle-age, he began directing again in earnest. “I love to direct,” Schram enthuses. “If you’re the producer, you’re the person who is taking care of everything - the money, the story, the people. If you’re a director, it’s more like you are the painter taking care of the colours. I love to do that!” He adds that he relished not having to talk about money all the time and being able to concentrate on the creative aspects of the process.

Shooting Star has several projects in the pipeline - and Schram is about to unleash havoc on the streets of Amsterdam. One of his next features as a producer is Prey, a new genre film from Dick Maas about “a lion in Amsterdam who kills everybody!”

^{Dave Schram}

Regret Direction: Dave Schram Script: Maria Peters, Dick van den Heuvel Production: Shooting Star Filmcompany Sales: Mountain Road Entertainment Group