Paul Verhoeven is a Dutch filmmaker. His blending of graphic violence and sexual content with social satire is a trademark of both his drama and science fiction films.
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’.
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.
Anouk Schemmekes, professionally known by the mononym Anouk, is a Dutch singer and songwriter. After her 1997 breakthrough rock single Nobody's Wife, she had hit records in the Dutch and Belgian charts. Many of her albums topped the Dutch album charts; most of them going Platinum and several debuting in the number 1 position. Her most famous singles include: R U Kiddin' Me, Michel, Girl, Lost, Modern World, Three Days in a Row, Birds, and Woman.
Dirk Jan Klaas "Klaas-Jan" Huntelaar is a Dutch former professional footballer who played as a striker.
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.
Black Book is a 2006 war drama thriller film co-written and directed by Paul Verhoeven, and starring Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman and Halina Reijn. The film, credited as based on several true events and characters, is about a young Jewish woman in the Netherlands who becomes a spy for the resistance during World War II after tragedy befalls her in an encounter with the Nazis. The film had its world premiere on 1 September 2006 at the Venice Film Festival and its public release on 14 September 2006 in the Netherlands. It is the first film that Verhoeven made in the Netherlands since The Fourth Man, made in 1983 before he moved to the United States.
Halina Reijn is a Dutch actress, writer and film director.
Diederik Maarten Samsom is a Dutch environmentalist and retired politician who served the Labour Party from 2012 to 2016. He was the first leader in the 70-year history of the PvdA to have been voted out of his position by party members. Since November 2019 Samsom is head of cabinet for First Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans.
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 m 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.
Gerrit Jan Komrij was a Dutch poet, novelist, translator, critic, polemic journalist and playwright. He rose to prominence in the early 1970s, writing poetry that sharply contrasted with the free-form poetry of his contemporaries. He acquired a reputation for his prose in the late 1970s, writing acerbic essays and columns often critical of writers, television programs, and politicians. As a literary critic and especially as an anthologist he had a formative influence on Dutch literature: his 1979 anthology of Dutch poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries, reformed the canon, and was followed by anthologies of Dutch poetry of the 17th and 18th centuries, of Afrikaans poetry, and of children's poetry. Those anthologies and a steady stream of prose and poetry publications solidified his reputation as one of the country's leading writers and critics; he was awarded the highest literary awards including the P. C. Hooft Award (1993), and from 2000 to 2004, he was the Dutch Dichter des Vaderlands. Komrij died in 2012 at age 68.
Abdelkader Benali is a Moroccan-Dutch writer and journalist.
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.
