Frans van Gestel

Frans van Gestel

Profile

Frans van Gestel

Movies

Goodbye Stranger
Producer
An all-too-ambitious playlist curator at a major music streaming company finds himself on a soul-searching summer day’s odyssey across his adopted Amsterdam.
Piece of My Heart
Producer
Two promising dancers navigate the demanding world of ballet in 1970s Amsterdam.
Close
Co-Producer
Two thirteen year-olds have always been incredibly close but they drift apart after the intimacy of their relationship is questioned by schoolmates. An emotionally transformative and unforgettable portrait of the intersection of friendship and love, identity and independence, and heartbreak and healing.
My Father Is an Airplane
Producer
When Eva’s mother unexpectedly dies, the life of Eva turns out to be built on secrets and lies. The fear of losing her mind, just like her father who has been living in a mental facility for many years, becomes more and more of a threat, propelling Eva on a quest into her past to face her demons.
Benedetta
Co-Producer
A 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with a novice. But it is Benedetta's shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its core.
Pari
Co-Producer
Babak, an Iranian student in Greece, doesn't show up to welcome his visiting parents at the Athens airport. Pari and her older husband, both devout Muslims abroad for the first time, are ill-prepared to search for their son in an intimidating and alien environment. All their attempts to find a clue that might lead them to him prove to be in vain and they soon reach a dead end. But Pari can't give up looking for him, even when returning to Iran seems like her only choice. Following the steps of her rebellious son in the darkest corners of the city, she will exhaust her inner strength to achieve more than a mother's search for her missing son.
The Barefoot Emperor
Co-Producer
How the last King of the Belgians becomes the first Emperor of Europe.
Tailgate
Producer
A cocksure, road-raging family man finds himself pursued and terrorized by the vengeful van driver he chooses to tailgate.
Shit Happens
Producer
When they are confronted with the disease of the pater familias, all the members of the Liefhebber family have to face their fears, faults and their troubled interrelationships.
Instinct
Producer
Nicoline, a criminal psychologist, begins work at a prison where one of her new cases, Idris — an apparently reformed sex offender — is preparing for release after five years of confinement. Despite her professional misgivings, she becomes infatuated with her charismatic, manipulative patient.
Patrick
Producer
Patrick is the handyman on his father's naturist campsite. The remaining time he dedicates to his hobby, designing and creating wooden furniture. When Patrick loses his campsite hammer, his quest to retrieve it takes him to the farthest corners of the camping grounds.
God Only Knows
Production Design
Three middle-aged siblings — two sisters and a brother — with wildly different personalities struggle to make it through the Easter holidays as the brother suffers one of his psychotic episodes.
Girl
Co-Producer
A promising teenage dancer enrolls at a prestigious ballet school while grappling with her gender dysphoria.
Orange Fever
Producer
As the whole country is preparing for the World Cup, all characters are confronted with the Dutch ‘Orange Fever’, which seems to either bring them closer together, or drift them apart.
Happy Hannah
Producer
Hannah (32) a very popular vlogger on YouTube, lives the perfect life on camera. When her boyfriend decides to walk his own path, it is getting harder and harder to keep up appearances.
Belgica
Co-Producer
The story of two brothers who, even though they have absolutely nothing in common, open a bar together that quickly becomes a regular hangout for nighthawks. Despite the success, they must soon face up to the difficulties inherent in running a family business. Their brotherhood turns into rivalry, through no fault of their own.
A Noble Intention
Producer
1888: a luthier, Vedder, has to step aside when his home, opposite the recently completed Central Station in Amsterdam, must yield for the planned Victoria Hotel. His cousin Anijs, pharmacist in the Northern provinces of the Netherlands, has gotten into a fix after illegal medical practices, and is looking for a way out. For himself and his wife Martha, but also for a colony of poor peat cutters whom he promises a future in the United States. Committed - or is it pride? - the two of them think up a scheme from which they all will fully benefit. With tragic consequences.
The long aftermath of a short announcement
Producer
A short – apparently innocent – announcement turns the lives of a couple of employees at a wellness centre down. An absurd tragicomedy.
Reckless
Producer
This stylish, sexually charged thriller revolves around two men who kidnap a woman and chain her to a bed as they await the ransom money. As the clock ticks, the woman discovers that she may have a relationship with one of the kidnappers that she never expected...and that the two men may have a relationship with each other that no one could have expected.
Nude Area
Producer
Naomi, a fifteen year-old Dutch girl from South-Amsterdam, develops a crush on a beautiful Arabic girl of the same age living in the poor quarters of Amsterdam West. During one magical summer in Amsterdam, the two girls play an emotional chess game of love, seduction and attraction.
Post Tenebras Lux
Producer
Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complementary or if they strive to eliminate one another.
Family Way
Producer
All the members of the De Roover family have ended up at a point of no return in their lives where crucial choices have to be made. Winnie wants a child. Her husband Rutmer wants to get in touch with his feelings. His brother Charlie doesn't want any responsibilities. Their brother-in-law Dick wants his deceased wife back. Head of the family Arend wants to be happy. Mother Jeannette wants somebody to want her. Written by Topkapi Films
The Broken Circle Breakdown
Co-Producer
The loss of their young daughter threatens to destroy the love and faith of two married musicians.
Code Blue
Producer
Marian, a middle aged nurse, devotes herself to her patients like a saint. Sometimes she even takes on the role of a redeemer, by helping the gravely ill to the soothing order of ultimate silence. When she gets linked to a neighbor in an act of common voyeurism, she becomes fascinated by him. Faced with the fragility of these newfound emotions, Marian surrenders to her human needs
Isabelle
Producer
Isabelle is a famous and beloved actress from the Netherlands, who disappears when on Holiday in Belgium. She has been kidnapped by bartender Jeanne Bitor, an artist with a disfigured face. Jeanne is very bitter about her 'ugly' appearance, and she is obsessed with the process of dying and deterioration of animals and humans. Therefore, she abducts Isabelle and starves her to death, while painting her in different phases of the process.
Black Butterflies
Producer
Confronted by Apartheid and a father who was Minister of Censorship, Ingrid Jonker searched for a home, searched for love. With men like Jack Cope and André Brink she found much love, but no home. Later, in his first speech to the South African Parliament Nelson Mandela read her poem "The Dead Child of Nyanga" and addressed her as one of the finest poets of South Africa.
Majesty
Producer
One hour before the State Opening of Parliament, something very unusual happens. The Prime Minister appears and demands an adjustment to the Queen's speech. The speech concerns aid to Africa. Even with all the pressure around the State Opening, Beatrix goes back in time, and remembers her banishment to Canada, the visit to the victims of the Flood disaster and the turbulence suffered by her parents at Palace Soestdijk during the Hofman case.
Joy
Producer
Joy is an emotionally damaged young woman of eighteen, who was given up at birth, to grow up in homes and with foster families. She lives on the fringes of society, getting by on benefits and earning a little extra by playing the accordion in the subway. In addition, she is a skilled shoplifter and has never been caught.
My Queen Karo
Producer
Nine-year-old Karo grows up with her parents in an Amsterdam commune in the Seventies. She leads a carefree existence in this utopia-for-adults. Everything is shared in the squat, but not everyone is able to honor these ideals. Karo gets confused because of the internal conflicts that start to divide the group. Karo slowly realizes that nothing can stay the same forever.
The Misfortunates
Co-Producer
13-year-old Gunther Strobbe grows up surrounded by alcohol, trash and his completely useless father and uncles. Slowly but surely, he's being prepared for the same hapless life. Can he defy his destiny?
Pez blanco
Producer
In Real Life
Producer
In his new film a young director puts his girlfriend through a love test. By doing so he risks his real life relationship with her.
Love Is All
Producer
A romantic comedy told with a set of interwoven Christmas tales about life, love, forgiveness and caring. A heroic vagrant becomes a TV sensation Santa Claws, while a prince takes a menial job at a department store to woo his sweetheart.
Melody Z
Producer
Slightly bored, two young Chinese people circle around each other in modern Shanghai. She works in a trance club, he is a DJ. In the daytime they are at home together, but their relationship seems to have reached a stalemate. They hardly communicate and have arguments about nothing. A meeting with her ex in the street sets the young woman thinking. She started dressing differently and took a new hairstyle, but has she really changed?
Black Book
Producer
In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, a Jewish singer infiltrates the regional Gestapo headquarters for the Dutch resistance.
Too Fat Too Furious
Producer
Bennie, a clumsy criminal who's touchy about his weight, teams up with his adoptive father's biological (serial killer) son, his employees who in his absence turned his snack-bar into a quiche bakery, a suicidal manic-depressive woman and a Yugoslavian who keeps blowing things up unintended. They need to get 300000 Euro to get Bennies father a new liver.
Picture This!
Producer
Young Karel buys his first mobile phone, with digital camera, and discovers unexpected possibilities to make his sexual fantasies come true. A slightly absurdistic comedy.
Electriek
Producer
An old farmer's wife lives alone on a secluded farm. In documentary-like observations, her idyllic life files past. Then, it is discovered that her house, as the last one in Belgium, has not been connected to the electricity grid yet. On their TVs and radios, the Belgians, living in houses that are filled with electric appliances, hear her story. `How has she managed to live like that?'
Phileine Says Sorry
Producer
Gorgeous Dutch youngster Max has two passions, acting and girls. The first becomes his brilliant career, which takes off so well he gets invited to a prestigious New York theatre course for a year. But since he met fickle bitch Phileine in an Utrecht park, his flirting life is cut short while she cruelly plays with his feelings rather then his horny body. After refusing to follow him, she turns up uninvited later and still acts jealous and possessive. Grief follows for everyone, working up to a convoluted finale.
Adrift
Producer
Fifteen-year-old Sammy has recently become aware of desires she awakens in men but one man to whom she is herself attracted is her older brother Jacob. With an institutionalized father and a mother neither sibling has seen for years, Jacob provides for the household through his trade in meat declared unfit for human consumption. This situation has sufficed for years but the dedication with which Jacob watches over his little sister leaves her no room to mature as a woman...
Monte Carlo
Producer
A young traveler picks up and elderly woman on his way from Holland to Monte Carlo.
AmnesiA
Producer
Alex, a 28 year-old photographer, is no longer able to photograph people, for some mysterious reason. Every time he focuses his camera on someone, the same woman appears in his viewfinder - an image he cannot bear. When his brother Aram, whom he has not seen or spoke to for years, unexpectedly phones him and asks him to come to their parental home because their mother is severely ill and may not have long to live, he panics. The thought of a confrontation with the area where he grew up and the renewed encounter with his family makes him feel nervous. Nevertheless, that evening he leaves for AmnesiA: the estate of his parents, the spot where he spent his youth.
fl 19,99
Producer
Different couples go to a hotel which has an special offer for staying over at the 31st of december 1999 in to the new millenium. The movie follows the different couples and their reasons to be in the hotel.
Paradise Framed
Producer
In this art-film, a famous multimedia artist abandons his former life for a new one in a hermetically sealed room filled with living portraits. His new space becomes a haven for the terminally dysfunctional. Trouble ensues when two strangers, the world-weary Col. Hardy and the handsome son of an aspiring presidential candidate, come to collect on a commissioned work of art.
Holly
Co-Producer
In the wake of the disaster, a 15-year-old girl is treated by a community in mourning as a saviour with a special talent to heal.