In 1944, a woman in Rijswijk buried everything her family owned and wrote her son a letter about potatoes and a barking dog. Nobody ever read it properly.

Kabir is 28, Indian, raised in London, and one year into a new life in Rijswijk — where he is still losing his battle with the Dutch language.

Every Wednesday, he meets Merel, a young heritage student who volunteers as his taalmaatje. While helping him practise Dutch, she gives him an ordinary-looking letter from the Second World War archive.

Merel has catalogued it twice and never noticed anything unusual. But Kabir reads Dutch differently. Slowly. Letter by letter. And that's why he sees what everyone else has missed for more than eighty years.

The first letters of ten lines spell:
NAALD. VREDE.

What begins as a language lesson becomes a fourteen-day mystery that sends Kabir, Merel, and her adventurous best friend Fleur searching across Rijswijk for something deliberately hidden during the war. Three strangers to the mystery. One forgotten message.

Wat bieden wij?
Your fee
Meals and refreshments while shooting
Clean, graded footage of your scenes for your showreel
A digital copy of the finished film
On-screen credit
Festival submission — the film is being made to be sent out

Type
Semi-professional production

Lokatie
Rijswijk

Omschrijving
MEREL DE WIT — female, 20s · LEAD · €120 for two full days
Final-year heritage student. Volunteers as a language buddy on Wednesdays, catalogues the archive the rest of the week, and is about four months from giving up on the only thing she ever wanted to do. Sharp, funny, generous.

FLEUR — female, 20s · SUPPORTING · €120 for two full days
Merel's oldest friend since childhood, and the only one here with a job and a shovel. Loud, fast, allergic to sentiment, deeply sentimental. She arrives out of a market crowd with two bunches of tulips and a stroopwafel in her teeth.

ANNEMIEK VOS — female, 30s · SUPPORTING · €60 for one morning & early afternoon
A gemeente official on the public reception desk. Fifteen years behind the same counter, brisk, dry, never once surprised. She helps people sideways, strictly within the rules, then denies doing anything at all.

Periode
Shooting: 2 full days, early to mid November 2026
Location: Rijswijk, Zuid-Holland.

Gemeente Rijswijk — the public hall, the archive, the reception desk
De Naald in the Rijswijkse Bos
Vredenburg — a residential street
Oude Rijswijk and the markt
Huis te Landelaan park
The canal at Leeuwendaal — golden hour
A small apartment

Spreektaal / talen eisen
English & Dutch

Reageren / meer informatie
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