Still: The Mayor: Halsema & Amsterdam - Mijke de Jong

Mijke de Jong followed Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema with her camera for “nearly a year” to make The Mayor: Halsema & Amsterdam* (which receives its world premiere in IDFA before its broadcast in the Netherlands on NTR on December 27). 

“At the start, I didn’t know her very well. She was the friend of one of my best friends so we met each other at parties but when she came to power, it suddenly felt the Mayor was closer to me,” de Jong says of Halsema. “We are more or less from the same generation. We were both politically active in the 1990s. I was involved in the squatter movement while she was working within the political system as a member of the Parliament.”

As we soon discover, Halsema doesn’t have an easy job. There are over 3000 demonstrations in Amsterdam each year, and she is often blamed if the demonstrations spiral out of control. “Now I am the one being laid into,” she observes of the stark difference between being a leader of a city and being the leader of the leftist opposition. Nonetheless, she refuses to hide behind security and still cycles and walks around her home city just as if she is a regular citizen. 

De Jong talks of the “relationship of respect on both sides” that sprung up between her and her subject. “Of course, she had to trust me.”

Halsema was more or less completely open with the director, although she made it clear that her family life was off limits. “That was her only restriction. For me, it was not a very difficult point. I wanted to make a portrait of her as a woman and as the mayor, but I wasn’t so interested to see her at home with the kids or with her friends.”

The director was determined not just to profile the mayor but to make a portrait of Amsterdam as well. The city itself becomes a major character in the story.

Halsema is responsible for public order and safety and therefore has to work closely with the police, with whom she has a close relationship. “I was a bit more suspicious, also because of my background,” de Jong remembers her own brushes with the cops when she was active in the protest movements of the 1980s and 1990s. However, as she spent time behind the scenes, her respect for law enforcement rose. “They were very…reasonable,” she concedes.

The Mayor’s devotion to Amsterdam is captured in expressive fashion in one late scene in which Halsema rushes to a fire at the Vondel Church. Instead of showing the flames, de Jong’s camera focuses on Halsema’s face and we can see very clearly her shock and anguish at the damage to a beloved city landmark.

Halsema is respectful to all groups in the city including the Ajax football fans. De Jong began shooting the documentary after the November 2024 riots when attacks were made on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans as tensions over the Gaza war boiled over. The documentary therefore uses archive material to deal with this episode. Even here, what becomes apparent is that the Mayor bases all her decisions on the law.

De Jong has directed numerous well-received dramatic features over the years ranging from intense family drama Tussenstand (2010) to Layla M (2016), about a young Dutch woman who becomes an Islamic fundamentalist. She has rarely tackled documentaries before but relished the challenge. She took inspiration both from cinema verité classics like Robert Drew’s Primary and from Eva Weber’s more recent archive-based Merkel (2022).

“It’s a completely different art,” she says of non-fiction. On her dramatic movies, she is used to having full control over what happens when and how. On The Mayor, on the other hand, she was at the mercy of real life. “I was completely lost…but it was a good exercise for me in letting go!”

Every Monday morning, the director would turn up at Halsema’s office, discover her agenda for the week and try to plan the shooting around that.

“I didn’t want to give a complete overview of everything she does. I wanted to show how hard she works and how sharp and analytical she is, but also how clumsy she can be; how empathetic but, at the same time, impatient, sharp-tongued and funny.”

At one point, the mayor chides her associates for not noticing she has just had a haircut. 

This, then, is a very human portrait of the politician, one that doesn’t iron over the creases, but still shows her in a largely positive light. “I’m glad we have a mayor with such a deep commitment to the city. I hope that people who watch this film will get a little sense of what it means to be the mayor of Amsterdam, and of the enormous responsibility that comes with being in charge.”

It’s a job that requires thick skin. Everything that the mayor says is analysed exhaustively by the media and is often blown up and reported in an unfair way. She is accused of everything from inefficiency to “moral failure” but she and her staff (the director believes) “work hard and are trying to make the city a better place to live in.”

And, yes, the mayor will be at IDFA for the premiere. She has already seen the film. De Jong organised a small private screening for her at production company WitFilm’s offices. They all ate pizzas as they watched. “It was a very nice viewing. She said it was completely OK for her. I was so happy because I think I would be very sad if she didn’t like the film.”

The Mayor won’t be given a theatrical release, Instead, it will be broadcast by NTR after Christmas. On December 27 (at 22.40, NED 2) “I really wanted the film shown on television this year as otherwise it will be old news!” 

Find out more about IDFA here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund