^{Life According to Nino by Simone van Dusseldorp. Photo: Kris Dewitte/Family Affair Films}

Amsterdam-based producer Floor Onrust says a good head for numbers and a passion for film were what set her on the path to becoming a producer. “I consider myself creative but not creative enough to be a director. My father was a documentary-maker for TV and my mother was a costume designer and then a talent agent. I saw what it took,” she recounts.

“Producing is perfect for me. It satisfies my love of film and figures and allows me to be creatively involved,” she continues. “I actually like the financial side of films.”

Onrust heads to Canada this September as the Dutch choice for Producers Lab Toronto, a joint initiative between EFP, OMDC (Ontario) and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) aimed at fostering connections between international producers and the Canadian film industry. “I don’t have any links with Canadian producers. They’re not in my network but I am curious to explore whether there are ways we can work together,” she says.

Onrust will present Bloody Mary, the latest project from graphic novelist and filmmaker Guido van Driel, whose debut film The Resurrection of a Bastard opened IFFR 2012.

The new project revolves around an alcoholic creator of erotic graphic novels, suffering from creative block, whose life is given new meaning after she stumbles upon a people-trafficking ring based next door to her flat in Amsterdam’s Red Light district. “It forces her into action, leads her to stop drinking and by the end of the film, find again her eye for beauty. It has a slightly surreal feel,” says Onrust.

It will be the seventh feature-length production for Onrust who set up her Amsterdam-based company Family Affair Films in 2002, shortly after graduating from the Dutch Film and TV Academy. “In the beginning, I produced only short films and worked a lot as a line producer for other companies but then I was asked to produce Nothing Personal by Urszula Antoniak and that was the moment when I decided to focus on my own company rather than working for others.”

It also marked the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with Polish-Dutch filmmaker Antoniak. Onrust went on to produce her 2011 Code Blue, alongside Frans van Gestel of Topkapi Film, and Simone van Dusseldorp’s children’s drama Life According to Nino, which is based on a screenplay by Antoniak.

Other upcoming productions include experimental artist and filmmaker Fiona Tan’s ambitious History’s Future. Part fiction, part documentary work, History’s Future stars Irish Mark O’Halloran as a man suffering from amnesia after a mugging, who sets off on an modern-day odyssey across Europe. The cast also includes French Denis Lavant, Irish Brian Gleeson and Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege.

A majority Dutch co-production with Germany’s Rohfilm and Ireland’s Vico Films, the hybrid feature involved more than ten financiers and took artist and experimental film-maker Tan, the lead actor Mark O’Halloran and a stripped down crew, on a six-country European tour over the space of six weeks.

“We were ambitious and the budget was tight. It was a roller coaster ride,” says Onrust, who first started working with Tan in 2009, when she handled the logistics for the artist’s audiovisual installation Disorient at the Venice Art Biennale. Toronto-based sales company Mongrel International is selling the film, which is set for an early 2016 release in the Netherlands.


^{Floor Onrust. Photo: Maarten Almekinders}