The Northerners
1992 film by Alex van Warmerdam
The Northerners (Dutch: De Noorderlingen) is a 1992 Dutch film written and directed by Alex van Warmerdam. The film was selected as the Dutch entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 65th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. This black comedy takes places in the 1960s, in a surreal Dutch new town consisting of only a single street. It is a darkly amusing satire of bourgeois life and its repressions, pursuit of fantasies through a Freudian forest are all executed with visual and dramatic flair. Van Warmerdam himself has said that he considers this his best film.
It won him a (Gouden Kalf) for best director, and the movie was nominated for the International Fantasy Film Award. Actor Rudolf Lucieer won a Gouden Kalf for his role as Anton, the forester. The movie is part of the official Canon of Dutch films and has gained cult film status.
Plot
A surreal black comedy set in a decrepit 1960s housing development. When Thomas' mother Martha is drawn into sainthood and changes their home into a shrine this frustrates his father the local butcher, Jacob and he finds it difficult to manage it all with his sexual needs.
The public source identifies “The Northerners” as 1992 film by Alex van Warmerdam. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Northerners, film and Alex.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2615833. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Northerners” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.