The Judgement

In September 1999 a widow was killed in her house in Deventer. The court convicted her financial adviser, Ernest Louwes. The journalist Bas Haan believed the case had been judged wrongly and started investigating. As the investigation went on, what he himself believed collapsed. Meanwhile another campaign was running outside: the opinion pollster Maurice de Hond had declared the man who did jobs around the house to be the real killer. Sander Burger's film is based on Haan's own book and turns the familiar shape inside out: here the journalist is not the hero who uncovers the truth but the person who is wrong first and then has to admit it. How the life of that man, who was never charged with anything, fell apart is the film's centre of gravity. Fedja van Huêt plays the journalist and Yorick van Wageningen the accused man. The production won six awards at the Seattle festival, including best director. The case is still argued about in the Netherlands.