Biography

Diederik van Rooijen is an award winning visionary writer-director known for blending visceral genre filmmaking with deeply character driven storytelling.

Van Rooijen grew up in the Netherlands, Greece, and the United States. He graduated from the Dutch Film Academy in 2001 as a director and director of photography and went on to build a prolific career across film and television in Europe before breaking out internationally. He created the critically acclaimed hit series Penoza, a landmark Dutch crime series that ran for five seasons. Its success led him to write and direct the feature film Penoza: The Final Chapter, which became the highest grossing Dutch film of 2019 and cemented the franchise’s cultural and commercial impact. Penoza has been sold to over 20 countries and was remade in many countries, including the U.S. adaptation Red Widow and Sweden’s Gåsmamman.

Across film and television, van Rooijen has built an award winning body of work, including a Bronze Lion at Cannes, and has written, directed, and produced for global platforms including Netflix (iHostage) and Amazon (Suga: Ride or Die), along with standout series such as Sphinx, Anonymous, and Heirs of the Night and international films such as Taped and Screen Gems’ The Possession of Hannah Grace in the U.S.

Now based in Los Angeles, where he lives with his family, van Rooijen is a leading voice in atmospheric storytelling, crafting psychologically grounded horror and high intensity thrillers that fuse haunting realism with relentless, edge of your seat tension.
- IMDb mini biography by: Diederik van Rooijen