Steffen Haars
director
With a trademark sense of humor and a drive to push the boundaries of comedy, Steffen Haars has in his decade in the film industry become the definition of canny entertainment.
The path to comedy revealed itself for Steffen during his studies at the Dutch Film Academy, when he also worked on his first sketch show ‘Depulpshow’ (as a duo with Flip van der Kuil). After 85-episodes it was clear that entertaining came more than natural to the young talent. Joining HALAL, he then embarked on what would turn into a monumental milestone of his career; the New Kids series. It became a phenomenon in the Netherlands and abroad, which fuelled the series to develop into two feature films. New Kids Turbo, followed by New Kids Nitro, not only became hits in the Netherlands, but were also successes in Belgium, Japan, Scandinavia and China to mention some. In Germany, New Kids Turbo was the biggest Dutch film release ever. On top of successes at the box-office, the blockbusters also picked up multiple awards at film festivals. After a 10-year rampage of comedy, HALAL’s lost child came back home in 2018.
Steffen’s original, going against the stream approach has unsurprisingly led to multiple successful national and international brand collaborations. The director has crafted commercial work for the likes of Dominos Pizza, Heineken,
Lays, BCC, National Geographic, MTV, Deutschland Card and Coca Cola. Passionate about making work that people want to see, Steffen is not scared to flirt with the boundaries between fiction, comedy and drama. With storytelling at the heart, Steffen is dead serious about comedy. In his own words, “you can have drama without comedy, but you can’t have comedy without drama”.