Mea Dols de Jong
director
Mea’s skills and craft centre around observing and exposing inter-human relations down to its finest detail. Combining psychology with refined atmospheric aesthetics, her work appears subtle, yet is provocative at the same time. Driven by realism, she wants to portray real people, share real stories that provoke real emotion – her commercial work reflects this approach and she tackles a commercial brief in the same intimate manner she does with her documentary work. Resulting in films that are very much in a league of their own.
Variety named her as one of the ‘Top 10 Europeans to Watch’, and the Dutch business paper NRC as one of the country’s 100 most influential artists. Originally studying to become a fiction director, Mea changed course quite literally and switched to documentary directing. The influence of fiction is however uncanny and remains a thread throughout her acclaimed documentary work. Her film ‘If Mama Ain’t Happy, Nobody’s Happy’ received global recognition and earned her over 27 international awards.
Always looking for ways to expand her horizons, she was invited for the prestigious Nieman Fellowship (Nieman Foundation for Journalists) at Harvard University in 2018. Since then, the director has aired two primetime feature documentaries on the Dutch National Public Broadcaster, called ‘Beyond Emoji’ and ‘At the Front of the Information-war’.