Jaap van Heusden

Biography

Jaap van Heusden was born 1979 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. As the son of a preacher he was surrounded by stories right from childhood. By the age of eight he had trashed his first Nikon camera. And by age twelve he burnt his first novel because it was so bad. At fifteen he was convinced he would become a major player in European politics. He gave up acting at seventeen because he found out there where people who were actually any good at it. Before going to film school, he lived and worked in Ouagadougou, West Africa, where he shot a series of most enlightening traffic safety instruction videos and co-founded a platform for young filmmakers that grew into the biggest human rights film festival on the continent, but only after he left. At the turn of the century he entered the Dutch Filmacademy where he focused on fiction. He graduated (after a fling with philosophy at the university and a screenwriting course in Hollywood) as a director in 2005 with his film A complicated story, simply told, showing the last intense three months in the lives of two friends, before one of them dies. The film was shortlisted for the Student Academy Awards, it was in competition at the Cannes film festival's Cinefondation and it won prices at festivals around the world. His short documentary Anderman showed his psychotic friend Per battling the madness of his mother. The film was warmly received by the press and distributed in national theaters. In the United States it was shown at Tribeca film festival and AFI Silverdocs. In 2008 he teamed with the famous Dutch actor Barry Atsma to create Ooit, a psychological drama about a mentally disabled man living with his mother. The film premiered at the Netherlands Filmfestival, was called 'a jewel' by the press and was nominated for the Golden Calf.