Netherlands,
2003, 103 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
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Alex van Warmerdam
- prod
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Marc van Warmerdam
- scr
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Alex van Warmerdam
- cam
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Tom Erisman
- editor
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Stefan Kamp
- mus
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Alex van Warmerdam
- cast
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Halina Reijn, Jacob Derwig, Carmelo Gómez, Elvira Mínguez, Ulises Dumont
- source
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WORLD SALES Fortissimo Film Sales, Veemarkt 77-79, 1019 DA Amsterdam, Netherlands. FAX: 31-20-626-1155. EMAIL: marnix@fortissimo.nl.
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COMMENTS
Alex van Warmerdam, Marc van Warmerdam, Halina Reijn in person.
OTHER
The Brothers Grimm hit a 21st-century world of illicit sex, car thefts and organ transplants in this ingenious Dutch thriller from one of Holland’s new wave of contemporary filmmakers. Fairy tales don’t come any darker, faster or meaner, thanks to van Warmerdam’s jarringly distinctive maneuver of guttering up the timeless realms of fables with the hard movements of modern life. One winter’s day siblings Jacob and Maria are abandoned in the gloomy woods of Holland by their heartless father. Battling their way out of the forest, then through cities cold and cruel, they fight their way south. In Spain, they meet the charming, wealthy surgeon Diego and his mysterious sister Teresa, a couple whose kindness and offers of shelter (and love) may disguise intentions far more sinister. Termed a “master fabulist” by the Toronto Film Festival, van Warmerdam uses his design background to craft a world seemingly recognizable as our own, yet shot through with the shadowy nightmares of fable. Darkly hilarious and thoroughly dark, Grimm moves from the damp chill of Northern Europe to the brilliant heat of Southern, revealing that the most disturbing terrors sometimes lurk in the brightest realms.
—Jason Sanders
FACTOID #171
When Festival Executive Director Claude Jarman addressed journalists at the 1977 Festival press conference, he announced that the SFIFF was launching an ’important experiment’ by screening films at the Castro Theatre (at the urging of Mayor George Moscone to take the Festival to the neighborhoods) The experiment must have worked, as the Festival still has screenings at the Castro to this day, in addition to many other satellite venues.
