Ilja Willems

Ilja is a documentary filmmaker focused on character-driven projects that illustrate social, political or historical developments all over the world. For the last decade-and-a-half she has been working on various renowned documentaries and series. Two of them won the prestigious Dutch Nipkow Award. The 36-episode documentary series called The Beagle, in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, for which she re-sailed Darwin's journey around the world won the journalistic award De Tegel. She worked on prize-winning documentary series like Metropolis, she also made two seasons about the current social-political climate in the United States. This series received an honorable mention for that same Nipkow Award. Her independent short documentary 'How Great it was' was shown at the Field Hockey World Cup in The Hague (and many international film festivals thereafter.) 'Etgar Keret' she worked on won an International Emmy for Best Documentary. In 2020 Ilja directed and produced the 10 episode series 'European in New York' with renowned author Arnon Grunberg and won the Best Documentary Award for her short 'Opioidemic' at the Chelsea Film festival in New York.