Casper de Boer

Julia's Secret

The Turkish girl Arzu, a student at a Dutch high school, is chosen to play the role of Juliet in a school-organized theatrical performance of 'Romeo and Juliet'. She becomes deeply obsessed with the role, seeing parallels with her own life. Her parents intend to arrange her marriage to a boy from Turkey whom she has never met. With the rehearsals, Arzu begins to lead a nerve-wracking double life. Her family knows nothing about her theatrical activities, and when her father finally finds out, he pulls her out of school and advances the wedding date of his daughter. However, the school officials manage to convince her parents to let Arzu play her role. The father watches the premiere with mixed feelings and sees himself reflected in the metaphorical mirror...

Return to Oegstgeest

Literary adaptation: an artist returns to the stifling atmosphere of the small Dutch village where he grew up, a place marked by morbidity, suppression of emotion, Calvinist hypocrisy and a suffocating patriarchy.

The Assault

At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.