Movies by Rifka Lodeizen

Rent-a-Friend

Rent-a-Friend

Cheated on by his successful girlfriend for lacking ambition and business-mindedness, an artist sets out to get rich quick by starting a one-man company as a friend for hire.

Messi and Maud

Messi and Maud

Maud and Frank are on holiday in Chile. Their relationship is fragile and so is Maud. After many years of trying, it is now time to face the fact that they will never have children. However, Maud is in denial. After a huge fight with Frank she runs off and sets out on a road trip through Chile to get her life back on track.

Hemel

Hemel

Divided into chapters, the film first chronicles Hemel's many sexual conquests, but then takes on a different tone as it explores her complicated relationship with her father, Gijs. A dapper auctioneer, Gijs has dated a series of younger women since Hemel's mother's death. But when Gijs starts seeing the charming Sophie, for the first time Hemel feels that her special relationship with her father is threatened...

At Sea

At Sea

Edo (42) has been on a solo sailing trip lasting two months. His daughter Maria (8) spends the last 48 hours of the trip, the crossing from Denmark to Harlingen, on board. But then the weather breaks. When Edo battles against the rough sea to save his daughter's life it turns out that he is actually involved in an altogether different fight.

Mercedes

Mercedes

Short film based on a short story by Jaap Scholten, in which a pregnancy does not last for nine months, but nine hours. A man and a woman meet each other at a party and decide to proceed to conceive a child. In the nine hours that follow, they pass through all stages of pregnancy, up to and including the childbirth.

Bite

Bite

A family is on summer vacation. Their adolescent son is a mixture of bored and horny. A yellow jacket wasp joins them in their car and then at their vacation campsite. A sultry young woman is doing laundry outdoors just as a brief, torrential downpour occurs and the wasp allows her to reveal, much to the young man's delight, her special knowledge of how to deal with insect bites.

Tonio

Tonio

After 21-year-old student Tonio dies in a traffic accident, his novelist parents face sorrow and regret as they suffer the agony of losing their only child.

A Noble Intention

A Noble Intention

1888: a luthier, Vedder, has to step aside when his home, opposite the recently completed Central Station in Amsterdam, must yield for the planned Victoria Hotel. His cousin Anijs, pharmacist in the Northern provinces of the Netherlands, has gotten into a fix after illegal medical practices, and is looking for a way out. For himself and his wife Martha, but also for a colony of poor peat cutters whom he promises a future in the United States. Committed - or is it pride? - the two of them think up a scheme from which they all will fully benef...

The Milky Way

The Milky Way

Girl meets boy in deserted planetarium.

We Will Never Be Royals

We Will Never Be Royals

Abandoned by their parents, two teenage siblings navigate life in youth care.

History's Future

History's Future

Losing his memory after a mugging, a man known only as 'MP' (Missing Person) leaves his home and sets out on a journey - in search not only for his memory but perhaps also for a new identity. MP finds himself confronted by a world in which there are no longer any certainties; an era of crisis on many levels. On his travels from country to country, portrayed via an associative image montage and through a series of strange, illuminating, sometimes comic encounters, MP attempts to gain insight into the complexity of life in the 21st-century Wes...

Stop!

Stop!

Just your ordinary video store around the corner: A woman enters, grabs a videotape and goes to the counter. She pulls a gun and asks for money. "Quick, quick, quick!" The cashier looks anxious and hands over the money. But just when she turns around to walk away, the cashier pulls a shotgun and fires. Is it for real? Apparently not, because someone shouts: Stop! and we suddenly find ourselves on a film set. The director seems to disagree however with the decision to stop shooting. She reflects on the situation. Then, just few moments later,...

Back and Forth Day

Back and Forth Day

The sun is shining, but it is not a cheerful day. Eight-year-old Linus sees it all happen. Mummy comes home with her nasty new friend to take away her stuff. Papa is sulking in the garden, while the neighbour peeps over the hedge. Even a pizza is no fun anymore. For a very short while, the familiar feeling of yesteryear is accidentally back, and then it is over. Big tragedy, captured in small details.