Following the selection of Dutch director Steven Wouterlood as one of Variety‘s 10 Europeans to Watch, we have been given exclusive access to the trailer to his feature debut, “My Extraordinary Summer With Tess.” The coming-of-age tale premieres in the Generation section of the Berlin Film Festival, and receives a theatrical release by September Film in the Benelux countries and by Farbfilm in Germany in the fall. Picture Tree Intl. is handling world sales on the movie.
The film, based on the novel by Anna Woltz, centers on Sam and his friend Tess. Afraid of being left alone as the youngest of the family, Sam begins to train for “aloneness” while on holiday on a Dutch island. There he meets the elusive Tess, who harbors a big secret. “Sam is drawn into an adventure that makes him realize that you should cherish your family instead of fleeing [from it],” according to Picture Tree. “He makes a drastic decision that puts his special friendship with Tess at risk and will change her life forever.”
The film is produced by Joram Willink for the Netherlands’ Bind and coproduced by Germany’s Ostlicht Filmproduktion. It is the first film to come through the Children Co-development Fund collaboration between Netherlands Filmfund and MDM.
Wouterlood’s “Anything Goes,” a short film for children’s television, won an International Emmy Kids Award and a Toronto Intl. Film Festival Kids Award in 2013. He also won the TIFF Kids Award for his short movie “King’s Day” in 2015, which won the Jury Award of Chicago Int. Children Film Festival as well. His TV series “Remi, Nobody’s Boy,” based on the novel by Hector Malot, was nominated for an International Emmy Kids Award in 2016.