David Verbeek wants with his new film Dead & Beautiful, which was shot in Taiwan, made its audience reflect on vampirism.
“It was always a metaphor for nobility and mysterious matters in castles that the common people don’t see anything of”, says Verbeek (40), who previously made films like Full Contact in Beat made, in it AD.
Dead & Beautiful was shot with international actors, including Gijs Blom, and is about a generation of young people growing up in extreme wealth. “So not the aristocracy. This is the very new money. What if these people turn into leeches?”
Verbeek came up with the idea while living in Shanghai and saw that certain young people showed off their wealth very showy. “With those big Lamborghinis and in clubs with transparent bathtubs full of champagne bottles. Twenty-year-old boys with a whole escort of models around them. Scenes like that. In the Chinese language, ‘leech’ is also a term that is often used for people who living in an ‘unfair’ way towards other population groups. “
Yet he does not condemn these young people. “I know a few personally and see them more as victims of the situation in which they grow up. They go to a special school, speak only to other very rich people and therefore become alienated from ‘normal’ life.”
Dead & Beautiful will premiere on Friday at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
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