Hardcore Never Dies
Raw drama by director Jim Taihuttu (Wolf, Rabat, De Oost) about the rise of the mid-1990s gabber music scene, in that decade the most popular Dutch subculture.
Seventeen-year-old Michael dreams of a future as a pianist, but his parents don’t want to hear about it. When he applies for the conservatory, he gets into the second round by the skin of his teeth. During his search for inspiration, his brother Danny turns up unexpectedly and introduces him to the Rotterdam gabber scene. Sweet Michael gets sucked into a world of hard and fast beats, brotherhood and drugs. When Danny’s pill dealing business reaches international proportions, the brothers’ only goal becomes to survive.
HARDCORE NEVER DIES is the new film by Jim Taihuttu. One of the biggest challenges for the director was to portray the nineties – in Rotterdam, where the film takes place for most parts – as realistically as possible. On some shooting days more than three hundred real gabbers were on set as extras. The result is impressive: just like a hardcore beat, HARDCORE NEVER DIES stays in your head for the next couple of days. (wg)