About / Bio Hanna van Niekerk (1991) is a film director and writer, with Dutch and Indonesian roots. Her debut feature If the Sun Explodes premiered at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2016, where it received critical acclaim and won the MovieZone Youth Jury Award, followed by a theatrical release in the Netherlands. From 2020 to 2021, she directed the 18‑episode webseries Anne Frank Video Diary, which won multiple awards, is available in over 60 countries, and has reached millions of viewers worldwide.
Hanna’s work is characterized by socially engaged, high‑concept storytelling, naturalistic performances, and poetic visuals. She is drawn to raw, elemental filmmaking and to stories told from the perspective of restless young adults searching for what lies beyond the horizon.
In 2024, she collaborated with Ugandan‑British folk artist Daudi Matsiko to create a music video for his song The King of Misery, which was nominated for Best Music Video at the XITE Music Video Awards 2025. Alongside her fiction work, Hanna recently directed the short documentary Above the Clouds (Hazazah/EO), which will premiere at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2026. She is currently developing two new feature films with Hazazah Pictures.
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