Alex van Warmerdam

Alex van Warmerdam was a Dutch director who attained his greatest acclaim with the dark comic thriller "Borgman" (2013). Born in Haarlem, The Netherlands on Aug. 14, 1952, van Warmerdam's show business leanings first manifested with small acting roles in films such as "Adelbert" (1977), and in co-founding two theatre groups, Hauser Orkater and De Mexicaanse Hond. In 1986, he directed his first feature film, the black comedy "Voyeur" (aka "Abel"), in which he also played the lead role. He continued this triple writer/director/actor role in most of his subsequent comedies, including "The Northerners" (1992); "The Dress" (1996); "Kleine Teun" (1998), and "Ober" (2006). The outlier was "Grimm" (2003), an action comedy that interweaves one of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales with a series of modern urban legends, in which he did not act. His first major screen presence not in one of his own films came with a supporting role in Arne Toonen's comic crime thriller "Black Out" (2012). In 2013, van Warmerdam's blackly humorous psychological thriller "Borgman" became his international breakthrough film, nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (the first Dutch film to garner that honor in nearly four decades), selected as The Netherlands' entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2014 Academy Awards, and achieving North American distribution.