July 7th, 1974. The Netherlands has just lost the FIFA World Cup final to West Germany. Now, the country is quiet, as if in mourning. But Jonas, a young boy, doesn’t really care for football. More concerned with collecting antiquities than sports, he makes his way around his sleepy town, encountering a cast of characters along the way who introduce him to the complexities of human nature, all while accompanied by his rebellious and unpredictable classmate Daan. Meanwhile, the potential abduction of a young girl, who happens to be Jonas’s schoolroom crush, casts a darker shadow over the town.
Directed by Guido van Driel, the creator of the graphic novel on which the film is based, and with black-and-white cinematography by Lennert Hillege, When We Lost to the Germans is a palpably authentic coming-of-age movie that might remind you of Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma or Italian neo-realist classics in the way it effortlessly conveys a specific time and place. The kids are wonderful, as the movie treads that fine, fragile line between innocence and experience.
Community Partner
Rein Hoeke, Kylian de Pagter, Susanne Wolff, Sanne Vogel, Peter Blok, Juda Goslinga
Netherlands
2023
In Dutch with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Floor Onrust
Screenwriter
Guido van Driel, Bas Blokker
Cinematography
Lennert Hillege
Editor
Stijn Deconinck
Production Design
Vincent de Pater
Original Music
Raf Keunen
Guido van Driel
Guido van Driel has written and drawn many successful graphic novels, of which When We Lost to the Germans was published in Germany and Guests in France. Van Driel’s debut film The Resurrection of a Bastard (2013), starring Yorick van Wageningen, was the opening film of IFFR 2013. Van Driel’s second feature Bloody Marie (2019) also premiered in Rotterdam, starring Susanne Wolff and Jan Bijvoet. When We Lost to the Germans is his third feature.
Filmography: The Resurrection of a Bastard (2013); Bloody Marie (2019)
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile
Julia Loktev's follow up to last year's film about dissident journalists in Moscow tracks the reporters as they are forced into exile across a four year period, but still striving to counterbalance state propaganda as Putin pursues the war in Ukraine.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Alex Gibney's doc relates the near-lethal attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022, the writer's painful rehab and recovery, and his reflections on life before, during and after the publication of The Satanic Verses.
Possible Love
Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al