Dutch documentary Meet the Fokkens coming to American cinemas soon

Following a successful screening in the Netherlands, the Dutch documentary film Meet the Fokkens will be on view in the United States from 8 August 2012. American film distributor Kino Lorber recently bought the film rights for the US. The film will be showing for two weeks in New York’s Film Forum, to be followed by a tour of various American cinemas.

Meet the Fokkens was premiered last year at the IDFA in Amsterdam and was an immediate hit with the public and the press. For over a year directors Schröder and Provaas followed two sisters, Louise and Martine Fokkens. The Fokkens are seasoned prostitutes, one of whom is still regularly to be found behind the window in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. The original title: Ouwehoeren literally means: Old Whores, which in Dutch has a double entendre as it is also a verb meaning ‘to natter, to gossip’: two old gossips. The twins, now nearing seventy, manage to make the most of life with a strong dose of Amsterdam humour and introduce the audience to an occasionally hard world where love is for sale.

More than 20,000 viewers in the Netherlands have seen the documentary on the life of the sisters and their fifty-year career in the Wallen area. The film has been sold as Meet the Fokkens to countries including Belgium, Finland, Israel, and Brasil; the awards-winning documentary was also selected for major international festivals like HotDocs in Canada, The Rome Independent Film Festival in Italy and the New Horizons International Film Festival in Poland. The Dutch version, Ouwehoeren, is also available on DVD from 7 June (special edition, with extra scenes).

Ouwehoeren/Meet the Fokkens is produced by Submarine in partnership with VPRO and Teledoc, a co-production of CoBO Fonds, the National Broadcasters Co-production Fund, Het Nederlands Film Fonds (Netherlands Film Fund) and NPO (Netherlands Public Broadcasting).