Jaap van Heusden

Biography

Jaap van Heusden was born 1979 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. As the son of a preacher he was surrounded by stories right from childhood. By the age of eight he had trashed his first Nikon camera. And by age twelve he burnt his first novel because it was so bad. At fifteen he was convinced he would become a major player in European politics. He gave up acting at seventeen because he found out there where people who were actually any good at it. Before going to film school, he lived and worked in Ouagadougou, West Africa, where he shot a series of most enlightening traffic safety instruction videos and co-founded a platform for young filmmakers that grew into the biggest human rights film festival on the continent, but only after he left. At the turn of the century he entered the Dutch Filmacademy where he focused on fiction. He graduated (after a fling with philosophy at the university and a screenwriting course in Hollywood) as a director in 2005 with his film A complicated story, simply told, showing the last intense three months in the lives of two friends, before one of them dies. The film was shortlisted for the Student Academy Awards, it was in competition at the Cannes film fe…

Directed

1. Win/Win (2010) — Director
2. In Blue (2017) — Director
3. The Man from Rome (2023) — Director
4. The New World (2013) — Director
5. Een ingewikkeld verhaal, eenvoudig verteld (2005) — Director
6. Blue Light - Memories from a Paramedic (2023) — Director
7. Silent Tears (2023) — Director
8. Ooit (2008) — Director
9. Anderman (2006) — Director
10. Le griot de Daporé (2006) — Director
11. A•SY•LUM (2017) — Director
12. 10 reports in 10 minutes (2024) — Director
13. Drone — Director
14. In Alaska — Director
15. De 10 Geboden (2025) — Director