Winterland

Several layers of fantasy and reality are intertwined in Tuinder's feature debut, a combination of live action, animation, film-in-a-film and film-about-film. Tuinder plays himself, as the director of a film about a 19th century journey into space in a Jules Verne-like airship. The artificial sets look clearly painted and knocked together, with skies made of paint and rocks made of cardboard. Between takes, the actors get lost in a forest. In this mysterious world, an overcharged director tries to coordinate things, while he is secretly in love with leading actress Tara Elders - who quarrels with Tuinder about her role as a result of a (actually published) newspaper article on the production. The many layers of reality are kept together by Tuinder' s reflective voice-over and his fixed character Sally de Winter, a girl with platinum blond hair, a pink dress and a suitcase, well-known from the short film Most Things Never Happen (2005). (Nederlands Film Festival)