Turkish Delight: Living or Dead?

About Turkish Delight

Turkish Delight (Dutch: Turks fruit) is a 1973 Dutch film directed by Paul Verhoeven and filmed by Jan de Bont. The film is a love story of an artist and a young woman, starring Rutger Hauer and Monique van de Ven. The story is based on the novel Turks fruit by Jan Wolkers.

Turkish Delight is the most successful film of Dutch cinema. The film was a massive success at the Dutch box office: according to Alle Record, 3,338,000 people saw the film, while the Netherlands Film Festival puts it at 3,5 million, corresponding to about 26% of the population of the Netherlands at the time. In 1973 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and in 1999 it received a special Golden Calf Award for Best Dutch Film of the Century. It was entered into the Canon of Dutch Cinema in 2007. In 2005 a musical version of Turks fruit was made starring Antonie Kamerling and Jelka van Houten.