Mees Peijnenburg
director
Mees entered the world of film with his critically acclaimed debut ‘Even Cowboys Get to Cry’ (2013). Since then he’s been twice nominated for a Crystal Bear at Berlinale – for his graduating short and ‘A Hole in my Heart’ (2015) -, won a Golden Calf (aka a Dutch Oscar) with his movie ‘We Will Never Be Royals’ (2015) and received the prestigious Dutch Directors’ Guild Award, granted annually for the most remarkable directing performance of the year. Mees was selected for the 2017 Cinéfondation Résidence, by the Cannes Film Festival, where he started to write his first feature film ‘Paradise Drifters’ which premiered at the Berlinale 2020, where it was nominated for a Crystal Bear. Also, the film has won a Golden Calf, and Mees himself was named the most promising film talent in the Netherlands by the nationwide newspaper Volkskrant. He is currently working on his second and third feature film.
His creative style experiments with different narrative forms, in which his distinct visual style is constant. He finds inspiration across a depth of formats and has also directed standout music videos and commercial spots.
