Paul Verhoeven is a Dutch film director. His films are known for their graphic violence and sexual content, combined with social satire. After receiving attention for the TV series Floris in his native Netherlands, Verhoeven's breakthrough film was the romantic drama Turkish Delight (1973), starring frequent collaborator Rutger Hauer. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and later received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century at the Netherlands Film Festival. Verhoeven later directed successful Dutch films including the period drama Keetje Tippel (1975), the war film Soldier of Orange (1977), the teen drama Spetters (1980) and the psychological thriller The Fourth Man (1983).
Football Club Utrecht is a Dutch professional football club based in Utrecht. The club competes in the Eredivisie, the top tier of Dutch football, and plays its home matches at the Stadion Galgenwaard.
Arnon Yasha Yves Grunberg is a Dutch writer of novels, essays, and columns, as well as a journalist. He published some of his work under the heteronym Marek van der Jagt. He lives in New York. His work has been translated into 30 languages. In 2022 he received the PC Hooftprijs, a Dutch literary lifetime achievement award. His most acclaimed and successful novels are Blue Mondays and Tirza. The New York Times called the latter ‘grimly comic and unflinching (…) while not always enjoyable, it is never less than enthralling’. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described him as ‘the Dutch Philip Roth’.
Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard is a Dutch photographer, film director, and music video director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2, having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both bands over three decades. His music videos include Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" (1990), U2's "One" (1991), Bryan Adams' "Do I Have to Say the Words?", Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" (1993), and Coldplay's "Talk" (2005). He directed the films "Viva la Vida" (2008); the Ian Curtis biographical film Control (2007), The American (2010); A Most Wanted Man (2014), based on John le Carré's 2008 novel of the same name; and Life (2015), after the friendship between Life magazine photographer Dennis Stock and James Dean.
Marius Job Cohen is a retired Dutch politician and jurist who served as Mayor of Amsterdam from 2001 to 2010 and Leader of the Labour Party (PvdA) from 2010 to 2012.
The Stripschapprijs is a Dutch prize awarded to comic creators for their entire body of work. It is awarded annually by the Stripschap, the Dutch Society of comics fans, since 1974. The prize is non-pecuniary, but is considered the most important award for comics in the country.
Halina Reijn is a Dutch actress, writer and film director.
Anna Maria Geertruida "Annie" Schmidt was a Dutch writer. She is called the mother of the Dutch theatrical song, and the queen of Dutch children's literature, praised for her "delicious Dutch idiom," and considered one of the greatest Dutch writers. An ultimate honour was extended to her posthumously, in 2007, when a group of Dutch historians compiled the "Canon of the Netherlands" and included Schmidt, alongside national icons such as Vincent van Gogh and Anne Frank.
Londonstani is Gautam Malkani's debut novel published in the United Kingdom in 2006. The book's name is derived from the setting of the novel, London, and the story's subject matter, the lives of second and third generation South Asian immigrants. The book was highly promoted, but did not do well commercially.
Cedric van der Gun is a Dutch former professional footballer who played as a winger.
Merlijn Twaalfhoven is a Dutch composer. He graduated from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2003. Twaalfhoven is internationally active in creating innovative projects and writing new music for orchestras, choirs and chamber music groups. He collaborated with Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Holland Festival, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, the Dutch National Ballet and Springdance festival, among many others. With his non profit organization La Vie Sur Terre he frequently produces large scale projects on location with local artists and musicians, for example in Cyprus, Japan, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Syria, and Central Europe. Twaalfhoven is a member of the Alpbach Laxenburg Group. He was a speaker about the role of arts in conflict areas at Aspen Institute Washington and Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, CO. In 2014 and 2015, Merlijn Twaalfhoven created "Bridging The Divide", a conversation with Tomáš Sedláček and Gloria Benedikt, linking economics and the irrational, positioning artists as agents of change. He was co-founder of Citizen Artist Incubator together with Gloria Benedikt, which was funded by Creative Europe and brought together 30 artists in two editions. The 2016 of Citizen Artist Incubator took place at IIASA. Twaalfhoven was a speaker about the role of arts in conflict areas at Aspen Institute Washington, TEDx Amsterdam, the European Forum on Culture 2013, 2016 and Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado, U.S.A. In 2017 he founded the Turn Club.
Wolf Erlbruch was a German illustrator and writer of children's books, who became professor at several universities. He combined various techniques for the artwork in his books, including cutting and pasting, drawing, and painting. His style was sometimes surrealist and is widely copied inside and outside Germany. Some of his storybooks have challenging themes such as death and the meaning of life. They won many awards, including the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1993 and 2003. Erlbruch received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2006 for his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator. In 2017, he was the first German to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Orlando Wensley Engelaar is a Dutch retired footballer. Engelaar usually played as a midfielder, and is well known for his height. At 1.96 metres tall, he is a towering presence on the pitch. His greatest quality was largely considered to be his through pass because, in spite of his size, Engelaar was very much an attack-minded player.
Dimitri Verhulst is a Belgian writer and poet. He is best known for his novels Problemski Hotel and The Misfortunates.
Abdelkader Benali is a Moroccan-Dutch writer and journalist.
Hafid Bouazza was a Moroccan-Dutch writer.
Gerwin van der Werf is a Dutch author of novels, songwriter and instrumentalist. In April 2010 his first novel, 'de Gewapende Man,' was published by Uitgeverij Contact. In January 2010, his poem 'Misbruik' won the first prize in the Dutch Turing National Poetry Contest, a prestigious Dutch poetry contest.
Charlotte Jacoba Maria Mutsaers is a Dutch painter, prose writer and essayist. She won the Constantijn Huygens Prize (2000) and the P. C. Hooft Award (2010) for her literary oeuvre.
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi is the 1997 debut novel by Dutch author Arthur Japin. The novel tells the story of two Ashanti princes, Kwame Poku and Kwasi Boachi, who were taken from what is today Ghana and given to the Dutch king William II in 1837 as a surety in a business transaction between the Dutch and Ashanti Empire. The two boys are raised and educated in the Netherlands, after which Kwame returns to Africa while Kwasi continues his education in Weimar Germany and then takes a position in the Dutch East Indies. The novel is a postcolonial depiction of the Dutch colonial past. It quickly became a bestseller and was translated worldwide, and is now considered a classic of Dutch modern literature.
