Karen de Bok Talent Prize to film plan about adoption

Filmmaker Huibert van Wijk has won the Karen de Bok Talent Prize 2020 with his film plan Kind van de Tijd. He will receive 25,000 euros for the development of the film, in which he, together with his father Lex and his brother Tim, who was adopted from Indonesia, look back on how that adoption went in the 1970s.

“Through the personal story, the documentary maker addresses social issues, such as the makeability of the composite family, illegal adoption and the tension between good intentions and white saviorism,” said the jury. Van Wijk managed to hit all jury members with his plan. “The plan is convincing because form and style as well as expressiveness are well thought out.”

The Karen de Bok Talent Prize was awarded on Thursday for the fourth year in a row to the winning documentary plan of the IDFAcademy & NPO fund workshop. The winner can continue to develop the plan together with a broadcaster, after which an application for a production contribution can be submitted to the NPO fund.

Former winner Marina Meijer won the Golden Calf for Best Short Documentary this year at the Netherlands Film Festival. She won the prize with the film Carrousel, for which she received the Karen de Bok Talent Prize in 2017.

Karen de Bok was a program maker and editor-in-chief of Television at VPRO for many years. She passed away in January 2017.

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