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For quite a few years, a belief held sway that bereavement consisted of a series of five – or was it seven? – stages, starting with shock and moving through to acceptance, after which you were more or less home free. Of course, no human emotion runs so smoothly, grief least of all. The various members of the family in Martijn de Jong’s Narcosis feel anger, anguish and denial by turns and sometimes simultaneously, each of them cocooned in their own sac of misery, unable to say what they feel, even to themselves. Grief here is as messy and resistant to resolution as it is in real life.

John, the paterfamilias (Fedja van Huet) was a professional diver. He was adventurous, eccentric and the fun parent; the last thing he brought home was an old telephone box, which he set up under the trees surrounding their rustically crumbling house. As the narrative wanders between past,...

Italy’s Coccinelle Film Sales has sealed two important European deals on Dutch Oscar bid “Narcosis,” directed by Martijn de Jong.

Coccinelle Film Sales’ CEO Francesca Breccia negotiated the agreements, with HBO Europe picking up the movie’s rights in 14 countries in Eastern Europe and Fabula Film acquiring them for Turkey.

Labelled as “a haunting and hopeful story about life, love and loss,” the movie follows a close-knit family disrupted when the father does not resurface during a professional dive. No funeral, no farewell, just a house full of memories. Burdened by the loss, Merel (Thekla Reuten) evades her husband’s death and everything related to it as her young children become entangled in a supernatural search for answers, with the family eventually confronting their grief in their own unique ways.

“We were immediately struck by Martijn’s talent and by his ability to create magical atmospheres. His vision is...

Narcosis, The Netherlands’ entry for the Best International Feature Oscar, mixes a cocktail of themes perhaps for the first time ever: clairvoyance, deep sea diving and grief.

Directed by Martijn de Jong and co-written with his life partner Laura van Dijk, Narcosis is about a young family that is hit by a tragedy and deals with it in a unique way. It won the Audience Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival as well as Best Film at the Nederlands Film Festival.

Related: The Contenders International – Deadline’s Full Coverage

De Jong calls Narcosis “kind of a mirror” to his own family, “but not at all biographical.” During Deadline’s Contenders Film: International awards-season event, he told us he and van Dijk “treasure hunted” stories that were part of their lives.

“One of them is the clairvoyance which is something that my mother does. She has this ability in real life.

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Martijn de Jong’s feature directorial debut, Narcosis, is off to a dream-like start as The Netherlands recently selected the Dutch drama to compete on its behalf for a Best International Feature Film nomination at the 95th Academy Awards.

Narcosis, which de Jong co-wrote with his partner Laura van Dijk, chronicles a young family that’s become rudderless after losing their patriarch (Fedja van Huêt’s John) a year earlier during a deep-sea diving expedition. While it’s not an autobiographical story, de Jong and van Dijk infused the story with plenty of personal details from their own lives. Perhaps the most notable example is that the family matriarch, Merel, portrayed by Dutch actor Thekla Reuten, is a medium, which de Jong’s own mother happens to be. Ultimately, de Jong was relieved when Reuten embraced this particular character detail since clairvoyance is often stigmatized by the Dutch.

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The particular limbo of grief, perennial fertile ground for drama, receives straightforward treatment in Narcosis, but with a poetic twist. Tracing the effect of a deep-sea diver’s death on his wife and children, writer-helmer Martijn de Jong infuses a standard template of family loss with a sense of mystery. Ocean exploration and the psychic abilities of the explorer’s widow are the story’s most unusual angles, and the restraint with which de Jong treats them is one of the film’s most effective qualities. The day-to-day takes on an understated eeriness that matches the unarticulated ache of the bereaved.

De Jong’s debut feature, scripted by him and his spouse, screenwriter Laura van Dijk, recently premiered on home turf, at the Netherlands Film Festival, and has embarked on the fest circuit, with dates in Thessaloniki and Cairo ahead. Though it might...

Winner of a special mention from the Berlinale Generation KPlus’ adult jury, the family-friendly, light drama “My Extraordinary Summer With Tess” is straightforward youth cinema with surprising emotional depth. Based on a prize-winning novel by Anna Woltz, a beloved Dutch writer of work for young readers, it explores family relationships and emphasizes the importance of human connection. Fronted by two charismatic tween performers, the title marks the feature debut of Dutch helmer Steven Wouterlood, who already holds an international Emmy Kids Award. The New York Intl. Children’s Film Festival will host the film’s international premiere at the end of February.

The story unfolds from the perspective of sensitive 10-year-old Sam whose voiceover musings not only provide the narrative’s momentum and glue but also articulate the film’s ultimate lessons. Sam, his parents and older brother Jorre (Julian Ras) are on a week’s vacation on a Dutch island,...