A former student of Dutch language and literature, Mike van Diem (1959) first started to develop his directorial talent in the student theater by staging classic plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Bride in the Morning.
A movie buff since his early teens, he quit university to work as a film critic before enrolling at The Dutch Film and Television Academy in 1987.
He graduated after writing and directing the 45-minute psychological thriller, Alaska, the first student film to ever win the Golden Calf, the Dutch Oscar for Best Short Film of the year.
Praised for its outstanding cinematic technique and compelling visual narrative, the film was acclaimed internationally, winning the Student Academy Award in the Unites States and screening at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival. The film also won the Grand Prix du Festival, Film Fin d'Etudes in France in 1990.
Van Diem then joined producer Laurens Geels at First Floor Features as an assistant director, before writing Across The Street, an English language screenplay.
During 1993 and 1994 van Diem helmed the prestigious Dutch television series, Called to the Bar, which earned him a solid reputation as an actor's director and paved his way for a feature-length debut.
In 1995, van Diem and producer, Laurens Geels teamed up to adapt their favorite Dutch classic, CHARACTER, into a screenplay.