Portrait: Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen

For producer Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen, also MD of Dutch production house 100% Film, documentaries must be as gloriously cinematic as their fictional counterparts. 

“I always wanted to make documentaries beautiful and fun and gorgeous,” she tells SEE NL. 

“Documentary can be just as exciting as fiction, and then even more so because it's about real people.”

In Cannes, during the upcoming Producer on the Move event, for which van Leeuwen is the Dutch representative, she will present director Willemiek Kluijfhout’s new doc project The Woman Who Made Van Gogh Famous, which tells the story of Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent’s sister-in-law who changed art history by safeguarding his legacy after his death. Nevertheless, despite her own great achievements, Jo’s name has been all but erased from history. 

“We want to change that,” says van Leeuwen of her and director Kluijfhout’s intentions for the film.

“It's a brilliant story that needs to be told and it stands for so many more stories that are not in the history books, because it is just not acknowledged that many, many women did many, many amazing things. Without her, nobody would know of Van Gogh.”

In the documentary, which van Leeuwen will produce alongside 100%’s “brilliant” Head of Documentary Ruby Deelen, we will hear Jo’s most intimate thoughts in voice-over, based on historical material distilled from her own diary or from the letters she wrote to her husband Theo (Vincent’s brother and benefactor), to family and other art dealers, as well as to Isaac Israels, the famous painter with whom she corresponded intimately after Theo died.

Additionally, six contemporary female narrators (artists, writers, curators and connoisseurs) will offer their own personal interpretations on the missing parts of Jo’s life story. 

“To be able to tell her story in a compelling and cinematic way, they will create their own ‘archival’ material by working with an actress, portraying Jo,” says van Leeuwen. “These photographs and moving images are not historical reconstructions, but vibrant, tactile and raw images that portray Jo as someone we can identify with. In this sense, the film re-imagines Jo – just like the speakers in our documentary, who brought her to life in their own narrative form.”

For more than ten years, van Leeuwen has been delivering acclaimed documentary films to major festivals around the world, with many works selected for leading international competition programs. Notable productions include Genderblend and King of the Cruise by Sophie Dros, and Vincent Boy Kars’ highly artistic and award-winning trilogy of Independent Boy, Drama Girl, and Future Me. In 2015, The Taste of Desire, created with Willemiek Kuijfhout, received the Best Pitch Award at DOK Leipzig before premiering at Hot Docs. Van Leeuwen’s upcoming project, Grace, first presented at the 2022 IDFA Forum, is now in post-production.

Earlier this month, Marjolein Busstra’s House of Hope won the Best International Feature Documentary Award at Hot Docs. Set in the West Bank, the film focuses on an elementary school run by a couple who teach their young Palestinian students non-violent resistance.

Van Leeuwen’s name has been mooted in the past as a potential Producer on the Move, but the business of real-life production had to take come first as she gave birth to two kids. 

“Now, 2026 feels like the like the perfect year and I thought, why not, and I'm super happy,” she says.

“I'm really thankful that there is something like the Producer on the Move programme. Producers are working their arses off to get these films off the ground and it's really nice to have some acknowledgement, and some support in connecting with other producers and making a bigger international network.”

“This kind of initiative really works,” van Leeuwen continues. “I know from previous programmes I did that you keep in contact with these people, and at some point you know a really good and nice producer in almost every country that you can work with, or can recommend to someone else, which is perfect. I think we're all a little bit crazy for working in film, so it's very nice to be selected for this Cannes programme.”

Find out more about Cannes here.