Best Dutch drama movies

In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, a Jewish singer infiltrates the regional Gestapo headquarters for the Dutch resistance.

In WWII's final years, a soldier in the German army, a British glider pilot, and a Dutch resistance fighter's paths intertwine. Their choices shape destinies, impacting not only their freedom but also that of others.

Inspired by the fictional Dr. Heiter, disturbed loner Martin dreams of creating a 12-person centipede and sets out to realize his sick fantasy.

Fifteen-year-old Mia is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor, she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life.

When a gunman enters an Apple Store in the heart of Amsterdam, the police face a delicate challenge to resolve the standoff.

Two teen track stars discover first love as they train for the biggest relay race of their young lives.

In the occupied Netherlands during World War II, banker Walraven van Hall is asked to use his financial contacts to help the Dutch resistance. With his brother Gijs, he comes up with a risky plan to take out huge loans and use the money to finance the Resistance.

An enigmatic vagrant cons himself into the home life of an arrogant upper-class family, turning their lives into a psychological nightmare in the process.

A young cattle farmer is approached by an unscrupulous veterinarian to make a shady deal with a notorious beef trader.

When the young republic of The Netherlands is attacked by England, France and Germany and faces its own civil war no less, only one man, Michael de Ruyter, can lead the county's strongest weapon, the Dutch fleet.

Jennifer, an Australian girl on the run from her past, turns up in Amsterdam and, in a desperate attempt to blend in, joins a coach-load of tourists on a tour of Holland's old windmills. When the bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere, she and the other tourists are forced to seek shelter in a disused shed beside a sinister windmill where a devil-worshiping miller once ground the bones of locals instead of grain. As members of the group start to disappear, Jennifer learns that they all have something in common – a shared secret that seems to mark them all for doom.

Harassed by bullies because of his mild autism, teen Ben finds refuge in an online computer game, which leads him to his virtual dream girl, Scarlite. Together, the odd couple seeks revenge against Ben's tormentors.

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1944, during World War II. Andries Riphagen, a powerful underworld boss, has made his fortune by putting his many criminal talents at the service of the Nazi occupiers. But the long battle is about to end and the freedom fighters, who have been persecuted and murdered for years, are abandoning their hideouts to mercilessly hunt down those who have collaborated with the killers.

A teen boy living in a small town on the Belgian coast finds his ordinary life take an unexpected turn when a handsome traveler blows through town.

Alice is a woman in her late thirties. Her life is in a rut. Each day at her work at a supermarket looks the same. Playing the piano is the only highpoint in her life. Then one day a mysterious stranger comes into her life.

Based on the real-life friendship between Anne Frank and Hannah Goslar, from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to their harrowing reunion in a concentration camp.

A young Dutch soldier deployed to suppress post-WWII independence efforts in the Netherlands’ colony of Indonesia finds himself torn between duty and conscience when he joins an increasingly ruthless commander’s elite squad.

In the year of 754 AD, during a time of epic battles and bloodshed, the legend of the pagan warrior king, Rebad, is born, but so is a new weapon against his people: Christianity. Redbad must ultimately unite a Viking army powerful enough to defeat the seemingly invincible Franks.

During World War II in the freezing winter of 1944-45 the western Netherlands are in the grip of a famine. Many people move east to provide for their families. Fourteen year old Michiel can't wait to join the Dutch resistance, to the dismay of his father, who, as mayor, works to prevent escalations in the village.

14-year-old Elias increasingly feels like an outsider in his village. When he meets his new neighbour of the same age, Alexander, Elias is confronted with his burgeoning sexuality.

Joris is trying to come to terms with his broken family relationships on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death when he meets the free-spirited, Yad. Also dealing with family issues, Yad has returned home to The Netherlands after living on his own. Joris and Yad spark an instant connection and decide they want to be more than “just friends,” but fear their families could threaten their relationship.

Three young guys like wine and women. They tested wine with pleasure, but the second they have never been able to taste. Under the guise of a wine tour, the three plans a trip to Spain to finally have sex. Nothing will stop them. Certainly not the fact that the first guy is blind, the second is in a wheelchair and the third is completely paralyzed.

Four out-of-shape car mechanics decide to participate in the Rotterdam marathon. If they reach the finish in time, they will be able to pay off their debt — if they don't, they will lose their garage.

Adaptation of one of Benelux most famous children's novels. Tough prime school girl Akkie loves soccer and can be a real bully. Love is the only thing she's scared of. When Akkie is diagnosed with Leukemia, she has to fight for her life. On the verge of going to high school, Akkie has to allow love to enter her life, and thus gain courage to accept the inevitable.

Gifted but hot-headed sculptor Eric has a stormy, erotic, and star-crossed romance with a beautiful young woman named Olga.

17-year-old Michael dreams of a future as a pianist, but his music education is not going smoothly. In his search for inspiration, he receives help from an unexpected source: his brother Danny introduces him to the emerging Rotterdam “gabber” music scene. Michael is drawn into a world of hard beats, brotherhood and drugs. When Danny's drug business reaches international proportions, the brothers must fight for their lives.

United States, 1926: Dutch 24-year-old Willy Wolters has immigrated to the American continent with her parents as a child. She dreams of becoming a conductor, but this is an ambition that no one takes seriously. Unbeknownst to her, she'll also become Antonia Brico.

On a cold November day in 1983, beer magnate Alfred Heineken and his chauffeur Ab Doderer are abducted. What follows is the most infamous kidnapping case the Netherlands have ever known.

An assistant prosecutor zealously pursues a conviction in the case of a pediatric nurse accused of murdering her patients, but doubt arises when her evidence shows that the infants may have died of natural causes.

After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.

A David's classmate, Jochem, is harassed by three bullies, but nobody does anything at school, not even David, who feels guilty for not pointing out the culprits.

Jan has been married to Gedda for 35 years. Gedda loves Jan so much that she smothers him: before he can grab a glass from the table, she has already given him one. She picks out his clothing, his friends, his vacations and all their other activities. In an attempt to get some space Jan concocts a strange plan that literally transforms his marriage into a locked ward. Their daughter finds herself in a similar predicament with her exacting and jealous boyfriend.

Young lawyer Iris discovers that she has an older, autistic half-brother Ray, who is in prison for the atrocious murder of his neighbour and her five-year-old daughter. When she meets Ray he reminds her a lot of her own son Aron, who also is autistic, and she starts to believe that he is innocent.

Gerrit de Veer, a novice writer on a 16th-century Dutch merchant vessel, chronicles the daring mission to discover a trade route across the North Pole to Asia. But the heroic journey turns into tragedy when the ship gets stuck in the relentless, penetrating ice. The men are forced to spend the winter on the frozen, arctic wasteland of Nova Zembla, fighting polar bears, hunger and lethal temperatures. Their chances of making it until the following spring are virtually zero.

The Black Widow is not dead ... Drug Queen Carmen van Walraven is hiding in Canada and leads an anonymous life there. One evening a colleague is harassed and Carmen helps her. In self-defense, she kills the perpetrator, is arrested and extradited to the Netherlands. While her children are in shock that their mother is still alive, there are also some people who still have to settle something with Carmen. Everyone is again dragged into an emotional rollercoaster. Carmen will now have deal with her past to save her family.

Three amateur dirt-bike racers each fall in love with a young woman who, with her brother, sells French fries and hotdogs at the races. Everyone is looking for a better life: she wants out of the business and away from her brother; and the motocross racers want to make their marks as professionals in their sport.

In pre-WWII Holland, the penniless, illegitimate son of a powerful bailiff sets out to become a lawyer as he spends a lifetime struggling to prove his worth to his relentlessly spiteful father.

In an early 20th century village, a painter with an unusual commission finds two pretty girls two model for him. The girls slowly come of age while exploring their sexuality and finding liberation in a repressed society.

Handsome Dutchman Stijn is the star of an advertising agency with his buddy Frenk and a hot womanizer. The boys start their own agency and Stijn marries colleague Carmen, who accepts his incurable greed for truly meaningless one-night-stands. Even fatherhood and a move to the boring country go well, until Carmen gets breast cancer. Now their lives are turned upside-down, maybe wrecked

Just before Anne is moving from Amsterdam to live with her great love Sara in Montreal, her publisher criticizes the manuscript for her first novel. What exactly is the story she's trying to tell? Does she even have something to say at all? Anne is forced to search for what she wants in life, because it is not only the main character in her novel who seems to be a little lost.

Sylvia has turned a blind eye for too long to husband Eddie's flourishing drug business. When his dealing takes a (deadly) turn for the worse, however, her need to protect the lives and futures of her young children compel her to flee. But Eddie will stop at nothing to keep his wife inside the ‘family'.

The once unconditional friendship between police officers Vincke and Verstuyft hits a very rough patch when they come up against a series of gruesome murders. Complicating matters even further, a survivor of the killer drives a wedge between them when Verstuyft falls for her charms. Meanwhile, the serial killer has a new victim in sight...

Patrick is the handyman on his father's naturist campsite. The remaining time he dedicates to his hobby, designing and creating wooden furniture. When Patrick loses his campsite hammer, his quest to retrieve it takes him to the farthest corners of the camping grounds.

A mild-mannered gay dentist and a womanizing bar owner rekindle their unlikely friendship when, upon meeting by chance after a decade apart, the latter turns out to be severely ill.

Nicoline, a criminal psychologist, begins work at a prison where one of her new cases, Idris — an apparently reformed sex offender — is preparing for release after five years of confinement. Despite her professional misgivings, she becomes infatuated with her charismatic, manipulative patient.

David Samuels is from an intellectual Jewish family from the posh Amsterdam Old South. He is also a man on a mission: to find a fabulous ghetto-queen with great tits and thick buttocks. His parents and friends declare him mad, but David continues unabated.

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.

Johanna wants to change her life and quit the criminal gangs of the town of Oss in the 1930s. The harder she tries, the more she is involved.

Blood, Sweat and Tears is a story about the life of Andre Hazes, a Dutch popular singer. It shows three crucial phases in the life of Hazes: his youth (in the 1960s), his breakthrough (1980s) and the last year of his life (early 2000s).

Gooische Vrouwen (Vipers Nest) is based on a very popular Dutch TV series and can be described as a Dutch variation of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. The film tells the story of four girlfriends who live in the bourgeois area ‘t Gooi, where life always seems to run smoothly, but dark clouds are gathering on the horizon. A flight seems the only way out…

In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Walter Süskind is a member of the Dutch Jewish Council who rescues hundreds of children from the concentration camps.

A promising kickboxer struggles to resist the temptations of a life of crime.

Following a dispute with his father, a young man falls prey to cryptocurrency's allure and an entrepreneur's audacious promises of financial freedom.

Vincke and Verstuyft are detectives of the Antwerp police department. This time they have to deal with the Albanian mob and some problems in their own police division.

Two small town Dutch boys whose socially unnatural friendship is so close, they care nothing for human or divine rules and lose all grip on reality, sliding into violent crime.

In the occupied Netherlands near the end of WWII, a young teenager, Jeroen Boman (Maarten Smit) is sent to the Dutch countryside to avoid the war in Amsterdam. While living with his adopted family, Jeroen meets and becomes friends with a Canadian soldier named Walt Cook, who is stationed at the same town he is staying at. Joroen and Walt spend a lot of time playing around and eventually a romantic relationship develops between them. The boy’s sexual curiosity leads him to have a sexual experience with Walt, an encounter that is shown with some vague detail but without actually showing any nudity, even though sexual intimacy between the two of them is implied. Overall, the movie handles this difficult subject with an elegant style and feeling, without having the adult-child relationship overwhelm the viewer and thus allowing the movie to be seen as just a wartime relationship between two people that marks an important time in a young boy’s life.

In the spring of 1945, a train deporting hundreds of Jewish prisoners gets stranded near a small German village occupied by the Red Army. Condemned to each other and in a context of deep mistrust, desperation and revenge, an unexpected friendship emerges between Russian sniper Vera, village girl Winnie and Jewish-Dutch woman Simone.

Waldemar Nods, a young man from Suriname, meets the older Dutch woman Rika van der Lans and they fall in love. In pre-WWII Netherlands they could not be more different. The one black, the other white, 17 years between them and on top of that Rika already has four children with another man. They love each other, but then Rika appears to be pregnant.

When extreme weather suddenly hits the Netherlands in 1963, a 120-mile tour skating event taking place on natural ice forces its contestants to contend with life-threatening race conditions.

After years of suppressing her desires, Stella finds she can no longer ignore her deep-rooted longings. Breaking out of her cage and starting a secret double-life, Stella transforms into a "unicorn", a nickname for single women who indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle, visiting sex clubs and erotic parties, and flourishing with all the new attention. Even as her husband uncovers his Stella's secret life, he can't do much more than give her the freedom that she obviously needs, in the hope it's all just a phase. Then one day she finds herself lying unconscious in a basement cell, with no idea how she arrived there. Days go by when an other woman is brought into her cell. Christine, a woman about the same age. In the following days they reveal their life stories to one other. Christine is convinced that the reason for their captivity lies in Stella's lifestyle.

In 1997, the Belgian public was in shock when judge Koen A. was convicted for the S&M relationship with his wife. Although their life was destroyed by the verdict, Koen and his wife Magda remain together today. The film is a story about dark sexuality and true love, told from the lover's unique point of view

Lea is an immaculate 30-something wife whose husband’s job in real estate allows her an enviably glossy lifestyle. The word ‘emancipation’ simply isn't in her vocabulary and as long as the money rolls in, all is rosy. So, when Harry Jr. arrives, she is a little traumatized at having to swap canapés for nappies.

Two brothers and their wives have dinner in a fancy restaurant to discuss their teenage children's misdeeds. An excoriating assessment of Europe’s contemporary social ills.

A mild-mannered police detective freshly stationed in tumultuous 1980 Amsterdam enters a race against time when he encounters a violent plot against the Dutch royal family.

A story about two half-sisters life in the eighteenth century Suriname. There is Lynda, a white colonial and slave owner, and her slave Mini-Mini's. While Lynda is slowly embittered by the hard life in the colony, Mini-Mini gets a chance at her own happiness. The question is, if she dares to seize that chance, as this happiness is at the expense of her mistress and half sister?

A lively young boy befriends and attempts to raise an abandoned baby jackdaw unbeknownst to his choleric and disapproving father.