Jef van der Heijden - Fietser naar de maan

In Holland there was hardly any film industry when the controversial film-maker and writer Jef van der Heijden (1926) was already making feature films on a low budget. After working with Bert Haanstra, he emerged as a director in the sixties. His film Ongewijde aarde caused such an uproar at the time - he used pictures of a real funeral in a fictional context - that the film was banned and Van der Heijden's production company went bankrupt. Documentarymaker Huub van der Put looked up the controversial filmmaker in Ireland, where Van der Heijden looks back with his on an eventful life archive. Among the elements that play a major role are the Second World War, Van der Heijden's boundless energy and the riot that put an end to his feature-film career.