Scott Vickers to Direct Amsterdam Gangland Thriller 'Nozem' as Cameras Roll Next Week
A revenge thriller set in Amsterdam's criminal underbelly begins shooting next week, with Scott Vickers in the director's chair.
The film is called Nozem — Dutch for "street thug" — and it follows a man named Robbie who infiltrates the gang of Franz Müller, the killer who murdered his parents in the 1990s, to settle the score from the inside. The premise carries the shape of a classic revenge arc: one protagonist, one target, a long-built grudge working toward a reckoning. Variety reported the full package on 28 August 2026.
Buddy Boerkoel wrote the screenplay and also leads the cast, pulling double duty as both the film's writer and its central performer. Boerkoel described the project in late July as an indie action film shot on Amsterdam turf, a label that signals a leaner budget and a hands-on production approach rather than a studio blockbuster. Instagram
Daniel Fathers, Francesca van Neuren and Ibrahim Naji round out the principal cast. A supporting roster includes Jamie Gene, Mario Wittmann, Bram Lgerstee, Liam James Collins, Ivana Stamenkovits and William Sutton. Producers include Jamie Gene, Eva Machek, Anna Vozdroganova and Orhan Vehabovic, with Boerkoel, van Neuren and Henk Hoek serving as executive producers — the latter group handling financing and oversight rather than day-to-day production.
Vickers comes to the project with a genre pedigree. He directed the horror feature Matriarch and episodes of the BBC drama River City, a long-running Scottish soap. His short film King of the Iron Will is Oscar-qualified and earned a nomination at the HollyShorts Film Festival, the Los Angeles short-film showcase that serves as an annual Oscar-qualifying event. Variety
The choice of Amsterdam as both setting and shooting location gives Nozem a distinct backdrop. The city's canal-lined streets and centuries-old architecture have hosted international productions before, but the film's focus on its criminal underworld positions it closer to the territory of European genre cinema than to the polished tourist-poster Amsterdam of mainstream features.
No release date, distributor or sales agent has been announced. The project is heading into principal photography with its financing and cast assembled, which means the film's path to screens will depend on what emerges from the editing room and, likely, on a sale to a distributor at one of the film markets where finished films are picked up — the kind of deal that typically closes at events like Cannes or the American Film Market.
For audiences, Nozem shapes up as a tight, character-driven thriller from a director with genre instincts and a writer-star carrying a personal vision onto the screen. When the first footage surfaces, it will offer the clearest signal of what Vickers and Boerkoel have built in Amsterdam.
