^{Still: A Christmoose Story. Photo: Nyk Dekeyser}

Lourens Blok’s comic A Christmoose Story is a festive film with a twist, revolving around a talking moose, a dishevelled Santa Claus, and a young boy mourning the departure of his father from the family home. The feature, supported by the Netherlands Film Fund, is an adaptation of German Andreas Steinhöfel’s popular children’s book An Elk Dropped In.

When a talking moose crashes through the roof of Max’s home, he can’t believe his eyes, or his ears. The moose was pulling Father Christmas’ sledge on a test run when they had an accident. Now he needs to find Santa quickly otherwise no children will get their presents. So the race is on but meanwhile Max’s neighbour, a keen hunter, sets his sights on the moose’s antlers.

“The original book has got an edgy feel to it that I really liked,” says Blok. “It’s a black comedy in the vein of a Roald Dahl work, with this Father Christmas who is a bit of a grumpy, old man and a moose who tries to impress the kids with the fact he is the one who pulls the sledge. I thought there was potential for it to be very funny.”

The Dutch, big screen adaptation was the brainchild of Amsterdam-based Lemming Film co-CEO Leontine Petit who met writer Steinhöfel when they both served on the international jury for the Berlinale’s youth-focused Generation section in 2007. “Andreas gave the book to Leontine and when she read it she immediately thought it would make a great Dutch Christmas film... she had already been thinking of doing a Christmas film for a while,” says Lemming producer Eva Eisenloeffel.

Lemming brought Blok on board early on in the project. He had directed the ambitious Africa-set debut feature The Seven of Daran: Battle of Pareo Rock about a young European expat caught up in a tribal war who is befriended by a talking giraffe.

At that stage, director and Lemming associate Marco Van Geffen had written the first draft of the script. Daan Bakker was then brought in to write the final version and polish the dialogue. “Marco built the structure and then Daan came in and worked on the black humour,” comments Blok.

One of the biggest challenges for the production was how to portray the moose. “We were, like, what shall we do with the moose? Are we going to fully animate it or are we going to build it,” says Eisenloeffel. “In the end we plumped for an animatronic. Lourens really wanted it to look as real as possible, to have that E.T. feeling where the kids would be able to touch the moose and not just be in front of the green screen.”

Stockholm-based make-up, creature and animatronic effects company EffektStudion, which previously worked on features such as War Horse, created the moose. They modelled it on a real life animal called Arthur, living on a farm in northern Sweden. “In The Seven of Daran, the giraffe was created with CGI effects which was difficult because it was not really there, in a way working with an animatronic was easier because it was,” says Blok.

The picture is a co-production with Swedish Svensk Filmindustri (SE) and Davaj Film and Belgian Anchorage Entertainment, and was shot in the studio in Belgium and on location in Sweden’s northernmost province. Blok says he loves shooting internationally although conditions can sometimes be challenging: “In Africa we were shooting in temperatures approaching 50 degrees and in Sweden we were working in minus 30 conditions... I like crossing borders, meeting new cultures and experiencing new places.”

Released in the Netherlands on November 28, the picture had sold some 215,000 tickets by mid-January with box-office returns north of €1.5 million. It has also sold to Germany, France, French-speaking Belgium and several Eastern European countries, where it is expected to be released Christmas 2014. Xiaojuan Zhou of Attraction Distribution is handling international sales.

Lemming and Blok are now collaborating on a second feature, an adaptation of another children’s book, Mirjam Mous’ Boy 7, which Eisenloeffel describes as like The Bourne Identity for teenagers. “It’s a teenage thriller about a boy who wakes up in the subway with only a backpack and has no idea who he is or how he got there. He has to backtrack his own movements to work out who he is, only to discover that’s a real problem,” says Eisenloeffel. The film, co-produced with Budapest-based Proton Films, is due to start shooting end February, beginning March.

On the fact that most of his films to date have revolved around children or youngsters, Blok says: “It’s not a deliberate move, it just happened that way. I love making films for youngsters because you can make a real impression on a young audience. For me E.T. remains one of my favourite films to this day.” He reveals, however, that he is also developing “a more personal, darker project revolving around relationships” aimed an older audience.

Lemming, in the meantime, is also at the Berlinale as a minority co-producer on Eskil Vogt’s Blind, which will premiere at Sundance and then screen in Berlin’s Panorama section. Other upcoming productions include David Verbeek’s timely Full Contact, about a US drone operator who drops a bomb on a school, which was presented at the Cannes Atelier in 2011. The film is due to shoot in Croatia in April.

^{Lourens Blok. Photo: Samuel van Leeuwen}

A Christmoose Story Director: Lourens Blok Script: Daan Bakker, Marco van Geffen Production: Lemming FIlm (NL) in co-production with Svensk Filmindustri (SE), Davaj Film (SE), Anchorage Entertainment (BE). Sales: Attraction Distribution.