Maarten Van der Ven

Biography

Studio Ruba is an Amsterdam based boutique production company founded in 2019 by producers Layla Meijman and Maarten van der Ven. With a deep faith in the power of collaboration, they focus on developing and producing cinematic cutting-edge stories with a select group of filmmakers. Their goal is to move, excite and broaden audiences' perspectives with innovative stories. After producing a series of international successful and award-winning short and mid-length films, Studio Ruba’s first feature film FEMI (Dwight Fagbamila, 2022) premiered at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2022 and was nominated for a Dutch Academy Award for best actor. Internationally, the film had its world premiere at Warsaw IFF. In 2023, their coming-of-age road film KIDDO by Zara Dwinger had its world premiere at the 73rd edition of the Berlinale, wasnominated six times at the Dutch Academy Awards including for Best Film, and won two awards (Best Sound Design, Best Montage). Besides the Netherlands, KIDDO had a theatrical release in Belgium and France and traveled to 50+ festivals, amongst which Cannes Écrans Junior, Chicago Children’s FF and Leeds IFF, picking up a number of prizes on the way. Recently the mosaic drama feature IDYLLIC by Aaron Rookus premiered at IFFR 2025 in the Big Screen competition. The film is a co-production with Flanders (Polar Bear) and Estonia (Allfilm). IDYLLIC was developed within EAVE and selected as a work in progress for CineMart Darkroom and First Cut Lab 2024. In addition, their first minority coproduction TO A LAND UNKNOWN by Mahdi Fleifel had its world premiere at Cannes 2024 in the Quinzaine Des Cineastes and TIFF for North-America, before traveling to 100+ festivals worldwide. The film is a co-production between UK’s Inside Out Films and Nakba FilmWorks, for France and Germany Salaud Morisset, for Greece Homemade Films and for The Netherlands Studio Ruba. This year, shooting will start for writer/director Amira Duynhouwer’s first feature SUGAR. SUGAR was part of the Creative Europe Media slate Studio Ruba was awarded in 2023. Other projects they are currently developing are, a.o. Ena Sendijarevvic’ first English language film THE POSSESSED; Zara Dwinger’s new feature WHAT’S WRONG WITH SYLVESTER, which was selected for the talent development program TalentScope, supported by a.o. Torino Filmlab and Ace Producers, DAUGHTER by acclaimed director Robert-Jan Westdijk, and the elevated horror SMOOK by Dwight Fagbamila. SMOOK presented at Frontières film market as part of Fantasia Festival 2024 in Montreal.