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Title: Sovereign Son
Director: Cindy Jansen
Genre: Feature Documentary / 79 minutes
Dutch premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam
Production Company: Witfilm (The Netherlands)
Short synopsis
After the body of his father is found in a tent in Amsterdam, Marcus searches for an identity through a man he never knew. Tracing parallels with a father who lived outside the system, his own unease with authorities and institutions begins to take shape. As that unease deepens, Marcus pulls the film toward himself, drawn to male voices that promise clarity and strength and to a future he believes he can still redirect.
Cindy Jansen Short Biography
Cindy Jansen (1976) is a Dutch filmmaker with roots in the arts. After several short fiction films, she debuted internationally with the English-language mid-length documentary Auld Lang Syne, premiering at IFFR in 2015 and nominated for a Golden Calf at the Dutch Film Festival. Her acclaimed feature debut Prince of Muck premiered at EIFF in 2021, screened at IDFA, and reached global audiences via the BBC and VOD platforms.
Synopsis
In December 2021, the body of an Englishman, Stanley Powton, is found in a self-built tent in a park on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Through the foundation The Lonely Funeral, his son Marcus is informed just in time to attend the burial. It is only the second time Marcus encounters his father. The first was briefly, as a newborn.
Years earlier, Marcus tried to trace his father through official channels and public appeals, following scattered leads that never resulted in a meeting. After Stanley’s death, making the film becomes a stimulus for Marcus to get to know his father posthumously - a way to continue a search that had failed in life.
Together with the filmmaker, Marcus returns to the place where his father lived and died. The tent has been removed by the authorities. What remains lies scattered on the ground, between leaves and sand: nails hammered into a branch, a plastic flower. Remnants of a life lived in refusal of institutions. Marcus carefully gathers and presents them as if they were treasures. Everything is covered in a thin layer of mould.
As Marcus retraces his father’s path, identification deepens. The father’s radical withdrawal from society becomes a seductive counter-image to Marcus’ own life, increasingly shaped by systems he no longer trusts. Drawn to male voices that promise control, empowerment and self-mastery, Marcus pulls the film closer to himself, wanting to grant its protagonist a good ending.
What begins as a search for a missing father turns into a confrontation with the desire to step outside the system - with the belief that true freedom might lie in starting over somewhere else, on one’s own terms.
Directors statement
This film began with a number. On the website of the Lonely Funeral Foundation, people assigned a lonely funeral are listed with their name, a short biography, and an assigned number. I was drawn to this reduction of a life to an administrative fact. The film started from the question of how someone arrived at such an ending, and what, if anything, remained when a life slipped from social view.
Through the foundation, I met Marcus van Belkum, whose father, Stanley Powton, was registered as Lonely Funeral number 268. The film is told from Marcus’ perspective and is built around materials that emerged from his search: media appearances, journalistic texts, the place his father lived, and a trip to his English family. In the film, these sources shift from information to traces of Marcus’ attempt to give meaning to his father’s life and death.
As the process unfolds, understanding turns into identification. Stanley becomes a counter-image to the life Marcus experiences as shaped by rules and institutions. Initially, Marcus derives his identity from the parallels with his father, but when those no longer provide stability, he looks to other men, authoritarian figures, who give him language and direction. At the same time, his desire to live ‘outside the system’ grows, leading him to libertarian ideas that place freedom against government intervention and emphasise self-discipline and individual responsibility. Through figures such as Jordan Peterson and David Goggins, he finds a language of control and optimisation that shapes his view of both his father’s life and his own, and further informs his search for identity, masculinity, and autonomy.
Our politically opposed perspectives and the filmmaking process itself become a site of tension. Marcus is skilled in image-making and actively involved in how he is represented and how the film develops. When I confront him with the political frameworks he draws on and his depression, a direct conflict arises. His initial resistance gives way to a moment of vulnerability, revealing how closely his search for autonomy is intertwined with existential disorientation.
Over the course of three years, Marcus lives in three residences, which he sees as temporary stops from where he projects his future elsewhere. Similar framings and recurring compositions within these interiors create a sense of stagnation rather than development. This dynamic is reinforced by AI-generated imagery. The prompts guiding these images are written by me as director and appear on screen. They produce imagined versions of Stanley’s life, and later of Marcus’. The images never fully settle and sometimes fail entirely, making their constructed nature and the fallibility of Marcus’ attempts visible.
Alongside Marcus’ residences, the film also shows the homes of people assigned a lonely funeral: empty rooms, abandoned belongings, portraits of what remained. These interiors echo the place where Stanley’s tent once stood. All spaces are numbered. Close-ups of mould forming circular patterns are interspersed with Marcus’ drone footage of the park above the former tent site. Three years later, the area is overgrown; nature has reclaimed the space.
Through Marcus’ personal search, Sovereign Son maintains a tension between autonomy and dependence, between belief and construction, and reflects on what it means to claim authorship over one’s life in a world that insists everything is a choice.
Crew
Director: Cindy Jansen
Production: Iris Lammertsma, Boudewijn Koole
Cinematography: David Spaans & Cindy Jansen
Editor: Katharina Wartena
Sound design & mix: Hugo Dijkstal
Composer: Hielke Praagman
Colorist: Laurent Fluttert
AI & Graphics: Gideon van der Stelt
Micro videography: Wim van Egmond
Title and poster design: Studio de Ronners
Cindy Jansen biography Filmography
Cindy Jansen’s educational background includes graduation from the Academy of Visual Arts in Arnhem (Netherlands) and Milan (Italy), as well as completion of the International Script Development and Directors Program at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam (Netherlands). Her works have been presented at numerous national and international film festivals, including Hamburg, Rotterdam, and Edinburgh. In addition, her videos and photographic works have been featured in both group and solo exhibitions such as Loop '05 in Barcelona (Spain), the Noorderlicht Photo Festival in Groningen (Netherlands), and the Gerhard Hofland Gallery in Amsterdam. Her body of work ranges from non-linear, experimental videos to feature-length documentaries, consistently characterised by a cinematic precision and contemplative rhythm. Through works such as Don’t Hit Me I Love You, With Love, and Auld Lang Syne (IFFR 2015, Golden Calf nomination), Jansen explores the psychological and emotional layers of human relationships. This exploration reaches a wider scope in Prince of Muck (2021), which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and later at IDFA, and was released in Dutch cinemas, broadcast by the BBC, and made available globally via Amazon Prime Video a.o. Currently, in collaboration with production company Witfilm, she is developing the feature fiction film Clockwork Universe.
Prince of Muck (Feature Documentary) 2021
Auld Lang Syne (Documentary mid-length) 2015
Come Spring (Short) 2010
Don’t hit me I love you (Short) 2008
Alice (Short) 2006
Director: Cindy Jansen
Genre: Feature Documentary / 79 minutes
Dutch premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam
Production Company: Witfilm (The Netherlands)
Short synopsis
After the body of his father is found in a tent in Amsterdam, Marcus searches for an identity through a man he never knew. Tracing parallels with a father who lived outside the system, his own unease with authorities and institutions begins to take shape. As that unease deepens, Marcus pulls the film toward himself, drawn to male voices that promise clarity and strength and to a future he believes he can still redirect.
Cindy Jansen Short Biography
Cindy Jansen (1976) is a Dutch filmmaker with roots in the arts. After several short fiction films, she debuted internationally with the English-language mid-length documentary Auld Lang Syne, premiering at IFFR in 2015 and nominated for a Golden Calf at the Dutch Film Festival. Her acclaimed feature debut Prince of Muck premiered at EIFF in 2021, screened at IDFA, and reached global audiences via the BBC and VOD platforms.
Synopsis
In December 2021, the body of an Englishman, Stanley Powton, is found in a self-built tent in a park on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Through the foundation The Lonely Funeral, his son Marcus is informed just in time to attend the burial. It is only the second time Marcus encounters his father. The first was briefly, as a newborn.
Years earlier, Marcus tried to trace his father through official channels and public appeals, following scattered leads that never resulted in a meeting. After Stanley’s death, making the film becomes a stimulus for Marcus to get to know his father posthumously - a way to continue a search that had failed in life.
Together with the filmmaker, Marcus returns to the place where his father lived and died. The tent has been removed by the authorities. What remains lies scattered on the ground, between leaves and sand: nails hammered into a branch, a plastic flower. Remnants of a life lived in refusal of institutions. Marcus carefully gathers and presents them as if they were treasures. Everything is covered in a thin layer of mould.
As Marcus retraces his father’s path, identification deepens. The father’s radical withdrawal from society becomes a seductive counter-image to Marcus’ own life, increasingly shaped by systems he no longer trusts. Drawn to male voices that promise control, empowerment and self-mastery, Marcus pulls the film closer to himself, wanting to grant its protagonist a good ending.
What begins as a search for a missing father turns into a confrontation with the desire to step outside the system - with the belief that true freedom might lie in starting over somewhere else, on one’s own terms.
Directors statement
This film began with a number. On the website of the Lonely Funeral Foundation, people assigned a lonely funeral are listed with their name, a short biography, and an assigned number. I was drawn to this reduction of a life to an administrative fact. The film started from the question of how someone arrived at such an ending, and what, if anything, remained when a life slipped from social view.
Through the foundation, I met Marcus van Belkum, whose father, Stanley Powton, was registered as Lonely Funeral number 268. The film is told from Marcus’ perspective and is built around materials that emerged from his search: media appearances, journalistic texts, the place his father lived, and a trip to his English family. In the film, these sources shift from information to traces of Marcus’ attempt to give meaning to his father’s life and death.
As the process unfolds, understanding turns into identification. Stanley becomes a counter-image to the life Marcus experiences as shaped by rules and institutions. Initially, Marcus derives his identity from the parallels with his father, but when those no longer provide stability, he looks to other men, authoritarian figures, who give him language and direction. At the same time, his desire to live ‘outside the system’ grows, leading him to libertarian ideas that place freedom against government intervention and emphasise self-discipline and individual responsibility. Through figures such as Jordan Peterson and David Goggins, he finds a language of control and optimisation that shapes his view of both his father’s life and his own, and further informs his search for identity, masculinity, and autonomy.
Our politically opposed perspectives and the filmmaking process itself become a site of tension. Marcus is skilled in image-making and actively involved in how he is represented and how the film develops. When I confront him with the political frameworks he draws on and his depression, a direct conflict arises. His initial resistance gives way to a moment of vulnerability, revealing how closely his search for autonomy is intertwined with existential disorientation.
Over the course of three years, Marcus lives in three residences, which he sees as temporary stops from where he projects his future elsewhere. Similar framings and recurring compositions within these interiors create a sense of stagnation rather than development. This dynamic is reinforced by AI-generated imagery. The prompts guiding these images are written by me as director and appear on screen. They produce imagined versions of Stanley’s life, and later of Marcus’. The images never fully settle and sometimes fail entirely, making their constructed nature and the fallibility of Marcus’ attempts visible.
Alongside Marcus’ residences, the film also shows the homes of people assigned a lonely funeral: empty rooms, abandoned belongings, portraits of what remained. These interiors echo the place where Stanley’s tent once stood. All spaces are numbered. Close-ups of mould forming circular patterns are interspersed with Marcus’ drone footage of the park above the former tent site. Three years later, the area is overgrown; nature has reclaimed the space.
Through Marcus’ personal search, Sovereign Son maintains a tension between autonomy and dependence, between belief and construction, and reflects on what it means to claim authorship over one’s life in a world that insists everything is a choice.
Crew
Director: Cindy Jansen
Production: Iris Lammertsma, Boudewijn Koole
Cinematography: David Spaans & Cindy Jansen
Editor: Katharina Wartena
Sound design & mix: Hugo Dijkstal
Composer: Hielke Praagman
Colorist: Laurent Fluttert
AI & Graphics: Gideon van der Stelt
Micro videography: Wim van Egmond
Title and poster design: Studio de Ronners
Cindy Jansen biography Filmography
Cindy Jansen’s educational background includes graduation from the Academy of Visual Arts in Arnhem (Netherlands) and Milan (Italy), as well as completion of the International Script Development and Directors Program at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam (Netherlands). Her works have been presented at numerous national and international film festivals, including Hamburg, Rotterdam, and Edinburgh. In addition, her videos and photographic works have been featured in both group and solo exhibitions such as Loop '05 in Barcelona (Spain), the Noorderlicht Photo Festival in Groningen (Netherlands), and the Gerhard Hofland Gallery in Amsterdam. Her body of work ranges from non-linear, experimental videos to feature-length documentaries, consistently characterised by a cinematic precision and contemplative rhythm. Through works such as Don’t Hit Me I Love You, With Love, and Auld Lang Syne (IFFR 2015, Golden Calf nomination), Jansen explores the psychological and emotional layers of human relationships. This exploration reaches a wider scope in Prince of Muck (2021), which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and later at IDFA, and was released in Dutch cinemas, broadcast by the BBC, and made available globally via Amazon Prime Video a.o. Currently, in collaboration with production company Witfilm, she is developing the feature fiction film Clockwork Universe.
Prince of Muck (Feature Documentary) 2021
Auld Lang Syne (Documentary mid-length) 2015
Come Spring (Short) 2010
Don’t hit me I love you (Short) 2008
Alice (Short) 2006