Screening in Competition in San Sebastian as this issue goes to press will be Nora Hoppe’s film, The Crossing, while actor Jeroen Krabbé - who played the villain in Bond movie The Living Daylights and counts The Prince of Tides and Crossing Delancey among his other Hollywood roles - is developing The Discovery of Heaven as a directorial follow-up to his international award-winner, Left Luggage, which has been one of the most widely released Dutch films of the nineties in international terms.

Based on a novel by top Dutch writer Harry Mulisch (whose book also provided the source for Holland’s other Oscar-winner, The Assault, in 1986) and scripted by Edwin de Vries (who worked with Krabbé on Left Luggage), Discovery is an epic tale about a chosen one who may or may not be the unwitting instrument in God’s decision to cut humanity adrift from His care and attention. The film will be produced by producer/director Ate de Jong (Drop Dead Fred), who handled production chores on Left Luggage.

Little Sister (Zusje, dir: Robert Jan Westdijk)

Among other top producers, Hans de Weers (Antonia’s Line) will be following up Casper Verbrugge’s Sombreman’s Action (which is due to screen in the first and second-feature section at San Sebastian this month) with Little Mary, a family story set in the Middle Ages, and Real World, a comedy about Dutch school kids on holiday in Australia. And Amsterdam-based producer Els Vandevorst has teamed up with Zentropa (plus producers from France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Iceland) for Lars von Trier’s musical, Dancer in the Dark, which stars Björk and Catherine Deneuve.

Meanwhile, Belgian-born bad boy Dominique Deruddere (Crazy Love) is in post-production with Everybody Famous!, a tale of kidnapping, ransom, rock-star lookalikes and a middle-aged man who loses his job, which features many of Holland’s top actors. Robbe de Hert (Gaston’s War) has lined up a cast from both of the country’s previous Oscar-winners - Willeke van Ammelrooy from Antonia’s Line and Jan Decleir from both Antonia’s Line and Character - not to mention former Emmanuelle Sylvia Kristel for gangster tale Boorman & Co, set in Brussels in the thirties. And Karim Traïdia, who took the Cannes Critics’ Week by storm with The Polish Bride earlier this year, is at work on a Dutch-produced French-language film, Le clou de J’Ha, based on the life and death of Algerian journalist Said Mekbel, a friend of the director’s.