JURI FERRI

L'olandesa is a historical short film set in the province of Bergamo, in Italy. It is an ambitious project, which puts the province of Bergamo, its history and its customs, often overlooked, on the big screen. Inspired by family events and fueled by the deep affection that binds the director to his homeland, the film sets out to tell Bergamo and its people through the medium of cinema. With this crowdfunding campaign, we want to ask for the support of the local community, without which we could not make this film, and involve it in our adventure.

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1965. Katrien is a young Dutch woman who moved to the birthplace of her husband Sergio, in the province of Bergamo. She struggles to adjust to life in the small town, also having to face the distrust of the fellow villagers towards a foreigner. Living so far from her family often makes her feel lonely: she finds herself having to raise her two-year-old son, Dante, with little support. Sergio, seen by many in the village as a hothead, struggles to find employment. He is too absorbed in his own problems to understand the difficulties faced by his wife. Their already turbulent relationship turns sour when Sergio decides to ask the parish priest, Don Anselmo, to help him find a job. The priest sets a condition: Dante must be baptized within the Catholic Church, something Katrien has always opposed. After Sergio decides to comply to the priest's request, Katrien begins to question her choices and her future with Sergio.

Katrien (26) gave up her life in Amsterdam to marry Sergio and move to Italy. She's struggling to adjust to her new home, but she doesn't want to disown her culture and her values. Rather, she would like to pass them on to her son Dante.

Sergio (30) was born and raised in the province of Bergamo, but has never really fit in to life in the village. He is seen by many as a hothead and a troublemaker, particularly after a few episodes that led to him being ostracized by various employers.

Don Anselmo (50-60) is the parish priest of the village where Sergio and Katrien live. A very influential figure in local life. His apparently charitable attitude hides a conceited and self-righteous personality.

Although entirely fictional, L'olandesa is inspired by the experiences of my grandmother, who moved from the Netherlands to a small town in the province of Bergamo in the 1960s, after marrying my grandfather. Her stories inspired me to explore how a couple like them could find a way to live in those years, in a rural environment that was still closed to the outside world. The story of Sergio and Katrien fascinates me because they have to confront both the internal tensions of finding a balance between their two different cultures, and the external pressures that push them to conform to the culture around them. The heart of the story centers on two people who must rediscover how to rely on each other: they will have to learn that the harmony and affection that unite them are stronger than the conflicts and expectations that want to drive them apart.

L’olandesa tells a story full of meanings and certainly rich of original filmmaking ideas. It presents a crucial moment in the history of Italy, the 1960s, and it does so by choosing a geographical setting, the province of Bergamo, which is still almost completely unexplored on the screen. The film portrays it in the historical moment of passage from a peasant and rural society to the one with industrial and city-like traits that is still known today. The film lends itself to a production of high value, especially in terms of cinematography, production design and costumes. Nonetheless, the particularly attractive aesthetic opportunity that the production of this film represents is supported by a mature thematic variety. The dignity of work, the difficulties of marriage, mistrust, religion and social pressure are all subjects that the screenplay deals with from the perspective of a historical investigation and that yet also lend themselves to infinite connections to our present and imminent future.

With L'olandesa, we will stage the environmental and human aesthetics of a small town in the Province of Bergamo in those years: a simple and rural place, with its habits and its standards of dress, in which the figure of Katrien and her colourful clothes will stand out like a foreign body. The film will see a preference for internal locations, both public (church) and private (Sergio and Katrien's house), characterized in a realist way through a precise and detailed historical research. The production will see a coexistence of real locations, portrayed from life, which have remained unchanged over time, and more elaborate set pieces, which give light to the colours and functionality of the early 60s. The public spaces, permeated by the local culture and its expectations, will be contrasted with the private spaces, in which Katrien and her family must find their personal way of life amidst internal tensions and pressures from outside. It is in these private spaces that elements of Katrien's home culture will be seen, timidly embedded in a world that is not their own.

Set under the bright sun of a long summer, the film will be a journey into the memory of a time past. Pastel tones, inspired by the faded photographs in our family albums, will transport us to the aesthetics of the 60s. To achieve this intimate and timeless look, we will shoot in digital format, on an Alexa Mini paired with a set of warm and soft textured lenses, with a preference for the handheld camera, bringing us close to the characters and immersing us, without being intrusive, in their intimate everyday life.

L'olandesa lends itself to a top-level festival circulation, both in Italy and abroad. The recent works by the director – Juri Ferri – have been selected and awarded at several festivals, including the oscar qualifying Hollyshorts Film Festival in Los Angeles, the BAFTA qualifying Carmarthen Bay Film Festival, and the New Renaissance Film Festival in London and Amsterdam (where Meidagen won the "Best Historical Short Film" award). We aim to present L'olandesa at the major film festivals open to short films in our country. Internationally, we believe that L'olandesa can also be successfully presented in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom where the director lives, as well as on the European festival circuit.

Once the diffusion of the short film on the festival circuit is concluded, we hope that L'olandesa will land on one or more VOD platforms to present the film to as wide an audience as possible, such as Meidagen – the director's previous short – which was shown on Shorts TV, the largest television channel in the world dedicated to short films, also present in Italy in the form of a VOD platform.

The distribution company Pathos Distribution (Rome), which distirbuted the short film L'Oro di Famiglia, by Emanuele Pisano, nominated for the David di Donatello in 2021, has expressed interest in represeting of L'olandesa at national and international festivals and VOD platforms.

The production company Oki Doki Film S.r.l. (Bergamo) offers its know-how in terms of fundraising and organization, as well as the contacts and all the production staff of the company. The technical rental company Oki Doki Rent S.r.l. will cover in kind almost completely the cost of renting equipment for making the film. The director, Juri Ferri, will contributw with his own private funds, while a further part of the financial plan is covered by investments from a private sponsor. We plan to raise the remaining part of the funds, equal to about 25% of the total budget, through this crowdfunding campaign, through which we hope to collect free donations from the local public as well as cinema admirers and supporters from Italy and abroad.

You can pledge your donation by visiting our Kickstarter campaing page!

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L'olandesa is a technically very ambitious short film. The historical setting, fundamental for the telling of the story, is accompanied by demanding requests in terms of production design and costumes, both economically (illustrated in our budget above) and logistically (management of which will be entrusted to heads of department). It is to face this production challenges and embrace its peculiarities that we are launching this campaign on Kickstarter. Through it, we hope to complete the fundraising, but also, and above all, to make the project known among the local community, to facilitate the search for further partnerships with sponsors and local authorities in the Bergamo area.