In cinemas and on the Eye Film Player
George Sluizer
7 June — 7 July 2024
still Spoorloos (George Sluizer, NL 1988)
From 13 June onwards, the Eye Classics series will also screen a number of Sluizer films that have been restored, including João en het mes (1972), Utz (1992 featuring Armin Mueller-Stahl), The Vanishing (1993) and the documentaries De lage landen (1961) and The Lonely Dorymen (1967).
Spoorloos, the Netherlands’ best psychological thriller, will be released nationwide in a brand-new restoration. In George Sluizer’s nerve-wracking Golden Calf winner a young woman (Johanna ter Steege) disappears during a holiday in southern France. This classic will be released nationwide on 13 June 2024 and will also be available on Eye Film Player as will 13 other Sluizer titles.
still Twee vrouwen (George Sluizer, NL 1979)
George Sluizer
George Sluizer (1932 - 2014) won the 1961 Silver Bear in Berlin for his short documentary De lage landen. Several more documentaries followed until, in 1971, he released his feature film João en het mes that was shot in Brazil. Spoorloos was his fourth feature film and accrued prizes around the globe. He followed this up by directing Utz (1991), the Spoorloos-remake The Vanishing (1992) and Dark Blood that, after the untimely death of River Phoenix in 1993, wasn't completed until 2012. In 2002 he released Het stenen vlot. Sluizer made films in six different languages over the span of his career.
still Spoorloos (George Sluizer, NL 1988)
Spoorloos
Stanley Kubrick called Spoorloos “the most frightening film I have ever seen”. George Sluizer’s psychological, intellectually challenging thriller is without doubt disturbing, claustrophobic and mysterious. On holiday in southern France, Rex (Gene Bervoets) loses sight of his fiancée Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) for a moment while they stop briefly at a petrol station. She has vanished without a trace. The film adaptation of Dutch author Tim Krabbé’s novel Het gouden ei, featuring music by Henny Vrienten, constituted Sluizer’s international breakthrough.
still João en het mes (George Sluizer, NL/BR 1972)
Eye Film Player
The selection of Sluizer titles on Eye Film Player – where Spoorloos is still the most watched film ever – will be expanded to encompass 13 short and feature-length films and documentaries, including Stamping Ground Director’s Cut (1970), Twee vrouwen (1979), La balsa de piedra/Het stenen vlot (2002), Sweetwater Junction (1981) and Dying to Go Home (1996).
Podcast
In 1988, Henny Vrienten composed an unforgettable soundtrack for George Sluizer's thriller Spoorloos. It is one of the highlights of Dutch film music history, but the soundtrack was never released and it is not in the Eye Filmmuseum archive. So where did the Spoorloos soundtrack go? In this final episode of a triptych about film music, Cesar Majorana speaks with admirers of the soundtrack and goes in search of the missing tape.
In cinemas
still Utz (George Sluizer, DE 1992)
still La balsa de piedra (Het stenen vlot) (The Stone Raft) (George Sluizer, NL/PT/ES 2002)