Synopsis

What do we do with the stories of eyewitnesses of World War II when they are no longer around, like that of my father Theo van Megen. With this film, I give my father a voice again so he can still tell his story. At the end of World War II, 15-year-old Theo and my grandfather Hendrik embarked on an odyssey through devastated Germany. Their barge the Actief was seized by the Nazis in the Netherlands to transport war loot to Germany. Theo survived several bombing raids, including that of Dresden. They endured the last days of the war on the German-Russian front line near Riesa. When the Russians, do not release the ship, Hendrik collapsed. In the hell of Stettin (East-Germany), Theo took the initiative and helped his father get the ship out of the hands of the Russians to Berlin, in the English zone. In Berlin, he fell in love with Dita, a German girl. With her, Theo was able to process what he had experienced. Finally, Theo and Hendrik returned by ship to the Netherlands in 1947. Theo was arrested for neglecting military service. War threatens him again, this time in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). But Theo had seen enough war and refused the rifle. SKIPPER BOY is both a portrait of a boy growing up and breaking away from his father as well as an anti-war film with a tragic love story. But above all, it is a film about remembering when there is no one left to remember.

Trailer

Making of

The genesis of this film begins with a song. My father had an LP by the German singer Hildegard Knef, and on that record was ‘Ich hab‘ noch einen Koffer in Berlin’. Every time my father played that song, he would say, ‘I have a suitcase in Berlin’, without elaborating. When I asked why, he only said: ‘I lived in Berlin for a while’. But he would not talk about it any further.

Many years later, when Hildegard Knef sang ‘Die Seligkeiten vergangener Zeiten sind alle noch in meinem kleinen Koffer drin’, my father told me about my grandfather’s diaries, which he had written during the war. I was curious and asked if I could read them. Unfortunately, they were not in our possession, and several years passed before I saw the diaries for the first time. They consisted of several notebooks and sketchbooks. However, I quickly gave up reading them because my grandfather had written everything in pencil and his handwriting was difficult to read. I didn’t have the patience for it at the time, as I had moved to Berlin in 1987 to pursue my artistic career.

The project really started when my mother passed away in 2003. My father was alone, so I thought it would be good for him to have an occupation. I suggested that he type out his father’s diaries for his children and grandchildren so that we could finally read about his experiences at the end of World War II. He agreed, but it soon became clear that revisiting the past was a big deal for him. At the age of 75, he spoke to me at length for the first time about his own war experiences. This evoked a lot of emotions. Finally, I was able to read my grandfather’s diaries.

While reading those diaries, I had the idea of asking my father if he would like to write his own story based on them. During long conversations, I had noticed that my father talked about events that did not appear in my grandfather’s notes. His motivation was again to do it for the grandchildren and future generations. I then bought my 77-year-old father a laptop and tried to explain how to use Word. That was probably the hardest part of the whole project. Nevertheless, my father managed to write his story, and in 2007 I published it under the title ‚Dood of Levenslang‘ (Death or Lifelong).

It was only after my father wrote ‚Dood of Levenslang‘ that I realised this was an exceptional story. Given my skills as a filmmaker, I felt it was my obligation to film this part of our family history. I started writing a script with no restrictions and an imaginary infinite budget. However, I had to stop when my father developed Alzheimer’s and I could no longer communicate with him. He passed away in 2015.

A year later, I continued writing the script, which had the working title ‚The Journey‘. It was to be a feature film with fictional dialogue based on true experiences. It was a kind of ‚Hollywood script‘, and, acting on the advice of screenwriters, I had fictionalised the names. My father’s name was now Hans. However, this soon felt wrong for two reasons. Firstly, I had distanced myself from my father, and I wondered why? Secondly, I realised that I actually wanted to challenge the Hollywood narrative. My generation grew up with a very clear black-and-white narrative. On the one hand, there were the evil Germans, and on the other, the heroes of the Allies. The Netherlands, of course, was part of the Allies.

So I was looking for a different angle in a film about World War II. It was clear that the story would also play in the post-war period. At the end of ‘Dood of Levenslang’, my father talks briefly about the Haven Barracks in Schoonhoven and his refusal to accept a rifle. After reading Antoine Weijzen’s “The Indonesia objectors, the forgotten victims of a colonial war”, it became clear to me what my father had experienced in Schoonhoven.

The idea was born of having my father tell his story from a cell in the barracks. This offered the dramaturgical possibility of a frame narrative, enabling three different periods (the journey, the love story, and the return) to be told simultaneously. The first draft of ‚Dood of Levenslang‘ was written. In 2019, I tried to secure financing for the film by pitching the project to numerous Dutch and German production companies. At one point, I received interest from NDR/Arte, but unfortunately the project was not accepted in Strasbourg. Funding for the project was unsuccessful.

The only one who did not completely turn me down was René Mendel of Interakt. Although he did not support the project financially, he certainly motivated me to fight the long road as a one-man team, because it was for sure a fight. I entered the production phase in 2020 by designing a storyboard.

At the same time, I learned Blender to create 3D models of props and interiors. It was important for me to recreate the original objects and rooms as accurately as possible. During this production phase, I was able to benefit from the helpful 3D community. Both in terms of tutorials and also actual 3D models, which I was allowed to use for this film.

A year later, I used Character Creator to create 3D models of the cast, which I then animated with iClone. Needless to say, I had to learn both programmes from scratch. That may sound dramatic, but ultimately, you only need to know 15% of a programme to achieve your goal.

In 2021, I started photographing and filming the original locations for the backgrounds. Rather than completely transforming the backgrounds to resemble the 1940s, I wanted to incorporate traces of the present to create a connection between past and present.

I then used Photoshop for the look and After Effects for the composition to bring the scenes from the storyboard to realisation. For these compositions I voiced all the roles myself and used udio (AI) to generate specific music.

When I edited all the scenes for the first time in late 2023, I soon found that plans for films never work out the way you expect. My biggest miscalculation was underestimating the power of form (thank you to all first-time viewers). By definition, an animated film is fictional, so to tell a true story in this form, you need strong anchor points to remind the viewer that it’s real. Thus, after the first edit, I had the idea to create the most documentary-like image in existence: the interview. Ironically, the interview with my late father is the most fictional part of the film.

In 2024 the film got its final title: SKIPPER BOY. After the picture lock, the sound chapter began. I am very grateful to all the creators of the website freesound.org. Here I could find sound clips to fill the images with life. Then came the voices for the roles. Here, too, a thank you to all colleagues at the ZDF. Since I could not find professional voices (for lack of money) in the Netherlands, I used the possibilities of AI (Elevenlabs). As a final step, I then produced the soundtrack in 2025 using nautical samples.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed in any way to the creation of SKIPPER BOY.

Ed van Megen, 2025