THE PARADISE SUITE is a story about six people finding each other and, sometimes with just one glance, influencing each other’s lives irreversibly. For the beautiful young Bulgarian Jenya, her journey to Amsterdam turns out to be the opposite of what she had hoped for. Her gruelling captivity forces the Angelic African, Yaya, to fight for her freedom – a dangerous fight in which he loses everything but his beloved faith. The Serbian war criminal Ivica, who has just become a father, is painfully confronted with the fact that crimes will never go unpunished. Bosnian Seka has nothing left to live for except her vengeance but as it turns out, it’s that same vengeance that brings love back in her life. And when the Swedish piano-wonder boy, Lukas, runs away from his new temporary home, his father Stig finally realises that their mutual passion for music is damaging their relationship.

I’ve lived in Amsterdam for ten years and during that time I became fascinated by the variety of cultures and backgrounds that our society contains. I wanted to catch the lives of six immigrants in a few brush strokes in which I could show their will power to survive. People can bond forever by only one glance into each other’s eyes, in a moment where everything is said and a complete life-story is told without a word spoken. To me, this is the purest form of a heartfelt connection between two human beings and this is what I tried to convey in THE PARADISE SUITE.

Previously Joost van Ginkel directed the award-winning short films SAND (Venice IFF 2008) and KISS (Tribeca FF 2010). His feature film debut 170HZ had its international premiere at Busan IFF 2011 and won several audience awards at European film festivals. Critics claimed the film to be ‘extremely intense and sensory’ and a ‘visual adventure’

His second feature film THE PARADISE SUITE was developed in the prestigious EAVE program and was presented during CineMart (IFF Rotterdam) and Sofia Meetings (Sofia IFF). It had it's world première at the Toronto IFF in their Discovery programme and was the Dutch submission for the Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film.

Joost van Ginkel is now developing his third feature film, AFTER THE STORKS.

Filmography:
2011 - 170HZ
2009 – KISS, short
2008 – SAND, short