Photo: Joes Brauers (by Ilja Keizer)

“I am super thrilled,” rising young Dutch actor Joes Brauers beams when asked what it means to be selected as one of European Film Promotion’s Shooting Stars at this year’s Berlinale. He adds that he is “super happy and super curious” to meet all the other participants in the programme and to compare notes on “how they work, what their ambitions are, and how they see the profession.”

Brauers is 26 but already has many years of experience. As a teenager, he co-starred in Dennis Bots’ Secrets Of Wars (2014) and has gone on to appear in such award winners as Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic’s harrowing Quo Vadis, Aida?** (2020), about the Srebrenica massacre, and Sharif Korver’s Middle East-set war movie, Do Not Hesitate (2021). He also recently won a Golden Calf for his performance as the young fan having an unexpectedly intimate and tender encounter with a sex performer in Muriel d’Ansembourg’s short, Fuck-A-Fan* (2025).

In Quo Vadis, Aida? Brauers plays a young Dutch soldier who witnesses a genocide. “I think it’s the biggest production in impact that I have done,” he reflects. “That film tore me apart when I saw it.”

Zbanic cast him after a single conversation. During the build-up to shooting, the actor then met many Bosnians who had lived through the hellish events of the 90s.

“I must say I didn’t know that much about it,” he says of the Dutch UN peacekeeping forces who failed to stop the mass murder of Bosnian males. “I knew that it happened but I didn’t know exactly what it meant,” he says. “I knew that for Bosnians, it was a very dark day, a day of grief - and obviously [also] for the Dutch people who were there…the beauty of making this film is that we were all in Bosnia, all the nationalities involved back then, and we could discuss the horrors of human behaviour.”

The Golden Calf-winning role in Fuck-A-Fan is completely different - but both projects had the same Dutch producer, Els Vandervorst.

“Maybe Muriel thought about me before, but she also heard about me from Els. Then I got this email with the script and the idea - and she proposed to eat soup together one afternoon.”

The young actor admits he was “a bit afraid” going into the shoot. “But that’s something good to feel.” He was starring opposite Alessa Savage, an experienced adult movie performer.

“It was completely different [to previous roles] but I love that. I love to go beyond my comfort zone.”

This was Savage’s first straight acting role. “We managed with Muriel to find this place where we met. It was very helpful to learn from her about pornography and intimacy on porno sets. It was also funny because I was not afraid of delivering my lines. I was more afraid for the parts where I took my clothes off. For her, it was the other way around…for her, the physical things were way more comfortable.”

Brauers began acting young. He was born in the south of the Netherlands, in a “little Catholic village” close to the German border. He was much taken by 1984 Dutch movie, Ciske The Rat.

“It’s a sad story, about a little boy ignored by his parents and who had grown up in a violent situation, but actually I was inspired [because] he could be on the streets, he could be naughty, he was singing…it was so different from the safe zone where I grew up.”

Brauers landed a role in a musical version of the movie. As a kid, he had dreams of being a fireman or police officer - but soon the pull of acting became too strong. He loved the “mystification” of pretending to be somebody else on stage and screen.

The role in Secrets Of War came when he was 13. “I loved it but my parents - my father is a bus driver, my mother is working in healthcare - they didn’t know anything about contracts. At a certain moment when I knew this was what I was going to do, I went looking for an agent.”

That’s what brought him to the Henneman Agency where he has been ever since. In the long term, he’d like to direct, and is already writing down “images and stories to trigger my imagination.” Unlike many other former child actors, he has made the transition to grown-up roles in a smooth and seamless way. Current projects include a romantic costume TV drama set in a hotel in 1913 and he is also rehearsing for a new musical. Can he sing and dance? “I must say I’m going to try!”

 Find out more about the Berlinale here.

Contact info
Sara Juričić | Talent Manager
sara@hennemanagency.nl

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*film supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Netherlands Production Incentive