About Studio Ruba
Ruba, derifed from the musical term tempo rubato.
Italian for ‘stolen time’.
The expressive freedom to play with the tempo of a piece.
Studio Ruba is an Amsterdam based boutique production company founded in 2019 by producers Layla Meijman and Maarten van der Ven. With a deep faith in the power of collaboration, they focus on developing and producing cinematic cutting-edge stories with a select group of filmmakers. Their goal is to move, excite and broaden audiences' perspectives with innovative stories.
After producing a series of international successful and award-winning short and mid-length films, Studio Ruba’s first feature film FEMI (Dwight Fagbamila, 2022) premiered at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2022 and was nominated for a Dutch Academy Award for best actor. Internationally, the film had its world premiere at Warsaw IFF. In 2023, their coming-of-age road film KIDDO by Zara Dwinger had its world premiere at the 73rd edition of the Berlinale, was nominated six times at the Dutch Academy Awards including for Best Film, and won two awards (Best Sound Design, Best Montage). Besides the Netherlands, KIDDO had a theatrical release in Belgium and France and traveled to 50+ festivals, amongst which Cannes Écrans Junior, Chicago Children’s FF and Leeds IFF, picking up a number of prizes on the way.
Currently the mosaic drama feature IDYLLIC by Aaron Rookus is in the final stages of post-production. The film is a co-production with Flanders (Polar Bear) and Estonia (Allfilm). IDYLLIC was developed within EAVE and selected as a work in progress for CineMart Darkroom and First Cut Lab 2024. In addition, their first minority co-production TO A LAND UNKNOWN by Mahdi Fleifel had its world premiere at Cannes 2024 in the Quinzaine Des Cineastes and is travelling to renowned festivals all over the world. The film is a co-production between UK’s Inside Out Films and Nakba FilmWorks, for France and Germany Salaud Morisset, for Greece Homemade Films and for The Netherlands Studio Ruba.
Writer/director Amira Duynhouwer’s first feature SUGAR is in advanced stage of financing. SUGAR was part of the Creative Europe Media slate Studio Ruba was awarded in 2023. Other projects they are currently developing are, a.o.; Zara Dwinger’s new feature WHAT’S WRONG WITH SYLVESTER, which was selected for the talent development program TalentScope, supported by a.o. Torino Filmlab and Ace Producers, DAUGHTER by acclaimed director Robert-Jan Westdijk and the elevated horror SMOOK by Dwight Fagbamila. SMOOK will be presented at Frontières film market as part of Fantasia Festival 2024 in Montreal.
Bio's
Layla Meijman
Layla graduated from the Netherlands Film Academy in 2013 with the praised graduation film Even Cowboys Get to Cry, for which she was awarded the FPN producers award. Straight out of filmschool she produced the pilot for the series TreurTeeVee independently.
Since 2014 she worked as creative producer for established production company Pupkin, where she produced the following seasons TreurTeeVee and initiated and produced several eye catching projects such as the short film Import (Ena Sendijarevic) and the feature films Take Me Somewhere Nice (Ena Sendijarevic) and Boy Meets Gun (Joost van Hezik). Her productions have been selected and awarded at numerous international film festivals, including Cannes, TIFF, SXSW, Busan, IFFR, Sarajevo and Berlin.
Maarten van der Ven
Maarten has a bachelor degree in Film- TV and Theatre Studies and finished the Netherlands Film Academy in 2009 producing the award winning film Bingo. He started working at Isabella Films on a.o. Winter in Wartime and after that as a line producer for renowned Dutch companies on films like The Peter Pan Man and Quality Time.
At the same time he started his own production company VENFILM which has produced a dozen of prize winning short and midlength films a.o. P, A Goat For A Vote and The Day My House Fell. His first feature Waterboys got great reviews, drew 60.000 people to the cinema and was sold to over 30 countries. In 2020 Maarten will take part in EAVE’s Producers Workshop.
Previous productions
