My Father's Garden

Original Title|Knielen op een bed violen

Lang | 120' | 2016 (Completed)

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The story of childhood lovers Hans and Margje and their attempts to create a horticultural business against all the odds...

My Father's Garden tells the story of Hans and Margje, the love of Hans' life whom he met when they were in primary school. Having grown up in the 1920s with an austere unforgiving religious father, Hans still bears the scars of severe physical mistreatment on his body. Hans runs away from home and studies horticulture in Boskoop and now, in 1949, has set up his own nursery business in a small village in the province of Gelderland. Margje is pregnant with their second child. Their firstborn, Ruben, is eight and interested in growing plants, like his father. Hans and Margje enjoy a good marriage, but there are bigger worries. The plants don't always sell well and their customers' attitude to paying their bills is atrocious. One afternoon, Hans is burning plants he can't sell when a strange man dressed in black appears from behind the dancing flames: Jozef Mieras. Mieras talks to Hans about God.