Max Eldering
Max Eldering
A woman stuck in a violent relationship, is forced by her husband to believe in a dream reality, where they live like a happy family whilst she increasingly struggles to ignore the evil reality she lives in.
A three part commercial for NOMILK2DAY. Showing the horrors of job applications.
A young boy performs his dream guitar concert. But this dream takes a dark turn.
A depressed psychopath kills his twin brother as the ultimate revenge for his bullying in their childhood, but is left disappointed with the lack of satisfaction he feels.
A young hackers invention to evade goverment surveilance, attracts a corrupt politician, as they try to steal it for their own political gain.
Two hitmen botch a job and end up stuck with their target, and as they try to finish the job, their own flaws keep getting in the way—
until...
...Their captive leads them to reconsider their criminal lives.
THE FUN OF FILMMAKING
ABOUT
I’m Max Eldering, a Dutch director and writer who caught the filmmaking bug back in high school and never shook it off. Since then, I’ve gone from animated fever dreams and wacky sci-fi shorts to co-founding Somnius, a film production company with friends, and debuting my short Post-Revenge Clarity at the 48 Hour Film Project in 2024.Right now, I’m working on my first feature, Bad Luck Club — an ‘80s-inspired crime comedy about three hitmen in the Dutch countryside. Alongside that, I make shorts, music videos, and commercials. Basically: if it’s original, bold, or just plain fun, I’m in.
SOMNIUS
Somnius is a film collective that helps companies and organizations tell their story with clarity and heart. We create corporate and societal films that are both visually striking and meaningful. Our process is collaborative and down-to-earth, aimed at uncovering the essence of each story. Guided by the motto “Dream with eyes open,” we make films that invite audiences to reflect, connect, and take action.
The start
In late 2023, Tim Geerlings and myself decided to put our passion to the test. We want to write a short film. We both had a slight background in filmmaking but we hadn't done much with it yet. We got together and started writing. and from there we wrote... and wrote.. and rewrote week in, week out. For an entire year we put our efforts into a script for this short film.
A difficult story
During the many writing sessions we learned a lot. The script has changed significantly over the year. From a somewhat generic horror story, to a challenging, experimental short about some dark subject matter.
A story about domestic violence.
We wanted to paint a picture where the audience, trough empathy, slowly understands why our protagonist makes the choices she makes.
Themes
The story revolves around a women and her marriage to her abusive husband. The husband is a control freak who forces her to live in a pretend world, where his prior actions are ignored.
The woman is stuck in a routine where she must keep up the facade.
The question is, how long can she keep it up and is it perhaps better to give in to the dreamreality?
So... what now?
The project has been on a short hiatus but it's back!
Currently we are testing our finished script with rehearsals. From there we will shoot another test version and prepare for production.
Test.. test.
Early on during the writing stage, we decided to make a test video. The main goal was to create a short film where we could get a sense of which elements work and those which don't. It was shot with a script which consisted mainly of parts of our original script instead of the full version.
