The Flying Dutchman

The story is set at the end of the sixteenth century. The Netherlands is under Catholic Habsburg rule. Protestants are being persecuted. Discontent is growing. Churches are plundered and wrecked. The Spanish inquisition grows harsher. That is how the Eighty Years War begins. Against that ground the film follows a boy. The boy is a serf. His father is said to be the Flying Dutchman. An Italian minstrel is the one who tells him. Out of pity the minstrel says his father is still alive. The boy sets out to find him. What he is really looking for is himself. The film is built in three parts and ran in competition at Venice. René Groothof and Nino Manfredi appear in the hundred and forty minute film, a Belgian, German and Dutch production Jos Stelling finished in 1995.