NORBERT TER HALL — VPRO — 2011
NB: Video in Dutch, no subtitles (yet).
Drama series about nine-year-old Ollie Hartmoed and his insanely complicated family. His father Oscar is now in his third marriage and his mother Lilian expects a child from her new partner. Ollie has one real sister, eleven-year-old Lola. He also has a much older half-sister, a half-brother who wants to become a half-sister, three new step-brothers, three Chinese adoptive-sisters, two brothers-in-law, a Moroccan nephew who calls him ‘Uncle Ollie’, a grandfather and grandmother and a very old great-grandfather. And to make matters worse, everyone has a fight with everyone.
Once upon a time, the family owned Hartmoed’s Palace of Draperies, one of the most beautiful shops in the city. Perhaps even of the country. It’s actually safe to say: on earth. With his 99-year-old great-grandfather, Opapa Hartmoed, Ollie speaks endlessly about life and about window coverings. How curtains make a home of any place when you close them. And how they give you the world when you open them again. When Ollie asks Opapa what he would prefer to have for his hundredth birthday, Ollie suddenly faces a life-size dilemma: Opapa wants nothing more than to see the entire Hartmoed family together once more. All together. And so Ollie’s mission begins to get his torn family together.
With co-editor Annelies van Woerden.