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When Dutch producer Edwin Goldman of Goldman Film asked young writer-director Finn Szumlas about the inspiration behind his debut feature, Stairway To Earth , a work-in-progress at this week’s NLWave26 showcase in Utrecht, Szumlas revealed it was his own life.
Szumlas’ Danish mother and Polish father had met in the 1970s in the Netherlands, where they had an affair. She became pregnant. They met again when arranging an abortion but, in the end, kept the baby – and little Finn grew up to be a film director.
Stairway To Earth has been updated to the present day and is now about a young Polish woman, played by Magdalena Koleśnik, who falls in love with a Dutch man, played by Kay Greidanus.
Goldman and Szumlas first met when the director approached Goldman to produce his short. “I thought he was a very talented director and we collaborated in a very nice way,” Goldman says, of how they progressed to makie a feature together.
The €2.5m project, which began shooting in early September, is a co-production between the Netherlands and Poland. The first part of filming is now taking place in Leiden before a break and shooting resumes in Poland next spring. Delivery is set for 2028.
“The great thing is that we are not in a rush on the edit or the post-production,” says Goldman. “It will give Finn a lot of time first to rest after the shoot in the Netherlands, then, with a fresh energy, edit first the Dutch part, and then we go back to the set in Poland.”
“We could have rushed it this year but it didn’t feel right to do it like this,” Goldman adds. “It may have been more expensive but it was worth it.”
Goldman’s regular Dutch co-production partner Petra Goedings of Phanta Film, whom he first met when she was one of his lecturers at film school, is also involved.
The Polish producer is Ewa Puszczyńska of Extreme Emotions. Her credits include major award winners such as Fatherland, The Zone Of Interest and Quo Vadis, Aida. Their collaboration began when Goedings met Puszczyńska in Cannes in 2023.
“After that first meeting, she was already on board. She explained to us that she chooses her projects with her heart. She also immediately felt that there was something in this project that resonated with her,” Goldman recalls.
Making the film as a bilateral co-production was in itself a creative decision, adds Goldman, noting that involving other countries might have brought more money but would have come with spending obligations and “losing some of the creative control.”
International prospects
In preparation for a debut feature, the filmmakers worked with several script coaches, including Molly Malene Stensgaard, the Danish editor and writer known for her work with Lars von Trier. “We took careful steps in the development and included a lot of women in the project to find the right balance between drama, romance, a female perspective, but also a male perspective.”
The film is mainly in English, which should help its international prospects. “For Finn, language is a very important part of the authenticity that he is looking for,” says Goldman. He never wanted them to speak in an artificial or too polished way. He wrote the script in English, translated it to Dutch for the Dutch actor and Polish for the Polish actress, and then asked the actors to translate the dialogue back into English.”
The aim is to capture the rough, broken English used by characters speaking a second language.
Ambitious
Goldman set up Goldman Film in 2011. By then, he had already produced his first film. “I came from a very ambitious year because there were two directors at the film school who already wanted to make their first feature film in the first year of film school and they asked me to produce it.”
The directors were Shariff Korver and Jonathan Herzberg. He not only produced the film but also distributed it – and all before graduation.
Goldman Film is part of a collective that also includes, among others, Phanta and family film outfit, BosBros. The company tackles films in many genres from young adult thrillers such as Dennis Bots’ Vicious, to LGBTIQ+ films and romantic dramas. “But what I keep getting drawn to is stories told from the female perspective, or the queer perspective, and they’re all stories about human relationships,” says Goldman.
Gusto Entertainment is on board as Dutch distributor of Stairway To Earth.
The NLWave26 showcase is taking place from September 30 to October 2 in Utrecht.
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