Biography
Ineke Houtman was born in the Netherlands in 1956. After graduating from the Nederlandse Filmacademie (NFA) in 1981, she worked almost exclusively for Dutch television until the late 1990s. During that period, she directed all 13 episodes of the children's program "Max Laadvermogen" (1986) and helmed the adaptation of the book series "Madelief: Met de poppen gooien" (1994) into a 11-part TV show.
In 1998, Ineke Houtman directed her first theatrically released feature film with “Madelief: Krassen in het tafelblad", another adaptation from the popular book series. The film, in which young girl Madelief researches the life of her deceased grandmother, screened in the 14plus competition at the 1999 Berlin IFF, won an Adult's Jury Award (Certificate of Merit) at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, and took home the audience award at the Nederlands Film Festival in Utrecht.
Houtman's sophomore feature "Polleke" (NL 2003), a multicultural teen romance, also screened at international festivals and won several awards. Multiculturalism and children searching for their roots remained recurring themes in her work: "De indiaan" ( NL 2009) portrays a Peruvian boy who grows up in an adoptive family in the Netherlands, while "Mijn Opa de Bankrover" (NL/BE 2011) tells the story of a girl from a Surinam looking for her biological father with the help of her adoptive grandfather.
Houtman went on to direct the comedy "Toen was geluk heel gewoon" ("Those Were the Days", NL 2014), which was based on the eponymous TV show, and the drama "De Ontsnapping" ("The Escape", NL 2015) about a woman hitting her midlife crisis.
Ineke Houtman eventually returned to children's films with "Hotel de Grote L" (BE/DE/NL 2017), a comedy about a 12-year-old boy who suddenly has to run his parents' hotel together with his three sisters.