Het Atelier: portret van Hella

The portrait of grandma Lientje that hung prominently in the living room made artist Hella de Jonge realise early on that there was a great sadness behind it. No wonder that very painting became the starting point of a documentary about her remarkable creative resilience.

During the lockdowns, Hella de Jonge retreated to her studio to pick up an old love: painting. What had once gone awry at the Rietveld Academy blossomed over two years into a style of her own with personal stories. Daily walks, with her husband Freek, across the Jewish Cemetery located 200 metres from the Atelier provide this story with surprising context.

In Het Atelier, Hella has conversations with friends and girlfriends, her father, a vitality professor and a designer. For eighty minutes, we get a picture of how, time and again, she found the élan to overcome disappointment and injuries and turn them around to create an impressively varied body of work.