Grachtwerk started as a personal project in 2019 — a place to write about films at a length that felt proportionate to what they were asking of me, rather than what a word count allowed. The name comes from the Dutch word for canal work, for the slow infrastructure of water management that Amsterdam is built on. It seemed right for a project about attention and patience.
The journal covers European and world cinema, with particular attention to the festival circuit — Cannes, Berlin, Venice, IDFA — and to directors whose work develops across time in ways that reward sustained attention. We review new releases, profile directors, report from festivals, and publish longer critical essays when the occasion demands.
The editorial position, to the extent there is one, is that criticism is a form of sustained attention and that sustained attention is always worth something. We try not to summarise films so much as think about them. We try to say something true rather than something useful.
Who We Are
Grachtwerk is primarily the work of M. Veldkamp, a film critic and occasional programmer based in Amsterdam. Contributions from other writers appear occasionally; they are credited where they appear.
M. Veldkamp has written about film for various European publications since 2012, covering the major festival circuit since 2015. The particular focus on European cinema reflects both geography and conviction — there is more interesting work coming out of Europe than most English-language criticism acknowledges, and part of the project here is to correct that imbalance modestly.
Editorial Policy
We accept no advertising. We do not receive payment for coverage. Festival attendance is self-funded or covered by press accreditation through the festivals themselves. Screeners for reviews are occasionally provided by distributors; this does not affect editorial decisions.
We do not operate a star-rating system for most content, though some reviews include ratings where the film’s place in a comparative context seems genuinely relevant. The ratings, where they appear, are five-point and roughly calibrated: five stars means essential, four means strong, three means worth seeing with caveats, two means a significant failure, one means something has gone badly wrong.
Contact
For correspondence: hello@grachtwerk.cyou
We read everything but cannot always respond. For festival coverage inquiries or press accreditation, please include the relevant festival and dates.
Technical
This site is hand-written HTML and CSS, served by nginx. No tracking, no cookies, no analytics. The fonts are system defaults. Page weight is kept low deliberately — a cinema site should not take longer to load than a film takes to begin.