Dutch distributor Huub Roelvink, founder and managing director of Cherry Pickers Filmdistributie, has been chosen for the inaugural EFM Distributor Award recognizing his contribution and dedication to arthouse distribution.
He was chosen by a three-person skilled jury consisting of Natalie Jeung at French gross sales firm Kinolgy, Kim Foss at Danish distributor Digicam Movie and Leila Hamid at Germany’s X-Verleih.
Created in 2016, Cherry Pickers is a serious drive in arthouse distribution within the Netherlands with latest titles together with Hard Truths, The Kingdom and 2024 Berlinale titles No Other Land and My Favourite Cake.
The €7.5k ($7.8k) prize, sponsored by the Netherlands-based movie and TV rights administration firm Fintage Home, shall be offered to Roelvink on the European Film Market (EFM) kick-off occasion on February 12.
Incoming Berlinale Professional director and EFM head Tanja Meissner has spearheaded the award.
“I wished to introduce an award throughout the EFM to recognise the essential societal and cultural worth of the work of European Arthouse Distributors which is usually undervalued,” she mentioned.
“Whereas awards principally go to filmmakers and producers, movies solely actually exist as soon as they’re distributed and attain their meant audiences. We regularly focus on the significance of fostering cultural alternate by upholding range and displaying completely different views, and cinema has a extremely highly effective position to play in that. Arthouse Distributors contribute not solely culturally, but in addition economically and politically by reinforcing the muse of European democracy.”
The jury mentioned they has chosen Roelvink for his passionate and pragmatic method to curating his slate.
“Huub Roelvink from Cherry Pickers Movie Distribution within the Netherlands is likely to be working in probably the most thriving territories of all of them, however that additionally means harsh competitors for content material – with steeper costs than in lots of different territories,” they mentioned.
“In his method to curation, Huub demonstrates a cautious stability of ardour and pragmatism. He evaluates movies based mostly on their inventive advantage and their potential to interact viewers, understanding that profitable distribution requires each high quality content material and viewers attraction.”
Cherry Pickers releases roughly 12 to fifteen titles per 12 months. Previous to creating the corporate, Roelvink was managing director of Think about Filmdistributie Netherlands and founding father of Cinema Delicatessen, a distributor specialised in documentaries.
He additionally has in depth expertise in cinema programming and exploitation, beginning his profession as a pupil within the Kriterion cinema in Amsterdam, and subsequently programming varied arthouses and being managing director of arthouse LUX in Nijmegen. He holds a Grasp’s in Social Anthropology from the College of Amsterdam.
