Almere Art House screens documentary on urban farming
This weekend the Almere Art House is hosting a special screening of a new documentary that turns its lens on the people growing food between apartment blocks, on rooftops, and in once-empty lots across the young Dutch city. The film follows a handful of growers who have transformed forgotten corners of Almere into productive patches of vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees. Visitors to the venue on Saturday evening will have the chance to see the work, ask questions of the producers, and can stay on for a short Q&A session.
Urban farming has moved well beyond the backyard chicken coop and the windowsill herb garden. In cities from the Randstad to the southern hemisphere, residents are rebuilding small bits of the food system inside dense urban environments. Almere, a city that was largely planned and built on former seabed since the 1970s, has become an unlikely reference for that trend. The documentary on screen this week captures how that story has unfolded locally, and where its growers think the next chapter might lead.
The screening at Almere Art House and what the film shows
The documentary, running just under an hour, follows four Almere-based growers through a single growing season. The film introduces its subjects with care, and viewers come away knowing the rhythms of each plot.
The growers profiled in the film include:
- A former primary school teacher running a communal herb garden on a former playground
- A small-business owner with a microgreens operation in a converted shipping container
- A young migrant family growing Surinamese vegetables alongside kale and chard
- A retiree who has spent fifteen years building a quiet, productive allotment
The film's director, a graduate of the Amsterdam film school, said in a brief interview with local press that she chose the city because Almere's flat, planned layout offered a clean canvas for telling stories about land use. There is little of the tangled, organic street pattern of older Dutch towns, and the camera work plays with that openness. Long static shots of neat rows of cabbages contrast with handheld footage inside busy community greenhouses.
The screening is part of a wider programme at the Art House that has been exploring food as a cultural theme for the past two seasons. Previous events have included a photography exhibition on Dutch market gardens and a panel discussion with chefs working in the city's restaurant scene. The documentary will run for two evenings, with tickets available at the door and a small reception afterward.
Why Almere became a quiet reference for city growers
Almere's unusual beginnings shape its relationship with food growing. The city sits on land reclaimed from the IJsselmeer, and the soil is young, sandy, and in many places still being improved. Early residents came from across the Netherlands and brought with them different food traditions, different seeds, and different ways of thinking about what a kitchen garden could be. That mixture, combined with relatively affordable land compared with nearby Amsterdam and Utrecht, made experimentation more accessible than in older Dutch centres.
The municipality has, over the past decade, written small grants and permissive planning rules that make it easier for residents to grow food on vacant plots. Local civic groups have run seed-saving workshops, and the regional water authority has occasionally opened its sites for educational visits. None of this is flashy, and it is rarely covered in the national press. But it has built up quietly into something that the documentary's producers wanted to capture on film.
For viewers who have never set foot in the Flevoland polder, the film works as a gentle introduction. The flat horizons, the broad cycling paths, and the sense of space make the city feel unlike other Dutch urban centres. That visual distinctiveness is part of why the documentary travels well as an export. It looks like nowhere else in the Netherlands.
Urban farming across continents
Community food growing takes very different shapes depending on climate, housing stock, and local politics. In Australia, the inner suburbs of Melbourne have built a dense network of community gardens and pocket farms over the past twenty years. CERES in Brunswick, the Collingwood Children's Farm, and a long list of smaller plots in Fitzroy and Carlton have become teaching grounds as much as production sites. Sydney's inner west, including Marrickville and Newtown, hosts a similarly active scene, while Brisbane residents have been pushing urban agriculture into council plans through community organisations in West End and Kelvin Grove.
The comparison with Almere is instructive. The table below sets out a few of the differences and commonalities between these scenes.
| City | Typical growing style | Common crops | Main challenge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Almere | Communal plots on reclaimed land, some commercial microgreens | Kale, chard, herbs, Surinamese vegetables | Improving young sandy soil |
| Melbourne | Inner-suburban pocket farms and established community gardens | Tomatoes, herbs, leafy greens | Summer heat and water restrictions |
| Sydney | Balcony and verge gardens, school plots | Citrus, leafy greens, herbs | Limited access to land |
| Brisbane | Suburban verge plantings, community orchards | Bananas, pawpaw, leafy greens | Storms and humidity |
The comparison is not exhaustive, but it shows how the same broad idea adapts to different conditions. Dutch growers tend to work with cold-tolerant species, heavy use of compost, and a planning system that is friendlier to small commercial operations. Australian growers, by contrast, often have to negotiate hotter summers, water restrictions, and a planning culture that can be slower to recognise urban agriculture as legitimate land use. Both communities face questions about soil contamination, access to land, and how to keep young people interested in growing food.
What the Almere documentary captures well is the social texture of urban farming. The film is less interested in yields per square metre and more in the conversations that happen over a shared hose or a bag of seed potatoes. That focus travels. Viewers in Sydney or Perth will recognise the gentle comedy of neighbours arguing about whether the communal compost bin is being fed correctly.
The filmmakers behind the project
The director and a small team of two producers worked on the project for about eighteen months. Their approach was deliberately low-budget. They shot most of the footage on a single mirrorless camera, relied on natural light inside the greenhouses, and recorded interviews in the growers' own kitchens where possible. The result is a film that feels intimate rather than polished.
One of the producers has said the project began as a way of getting to know her own neighbourhood. She had recently moved to Almere from Amsterdam and found the city's food-growing scene more visible and more welcoming than she expected. That personal starting point shaped the film's tone. It is an outsider's affectionate gaze, but one that quickly settles into the rhythms of the people on screen.
A few details about the production help explain the film's character:
- The crew consisted of three people working with one camera
- All interviewees were volunteers with no payment beyond shared meals
- The film was edited in a small studio above a bakery in central Almere
The Art House screening will be the documentary's local premiere. Festival programmers in the Netherlands and elsewhere have already expressed interest, and there is talk of a subtitled version for an Australian audience, given the strong urban farming networks there. More information about the project's wider circulation is available through this independent feature.
Community gardens and the Australian connection
For those watching from Australia, the film offers a useful mirror. Urban farming in cities such as Melbourne and Brisbane has matured into a recognisable movement, with established organisations, dedicated training programmes, and a presence at major events such as the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and the Royal Queensland Show. Local councils in New South Wales, including Inner West and the City of Sydney, have begun writing urban agriculture into their strategic plans.
Australian growers tend to talk about their work with a particular blend of practicality and mateship. A typical conversation at a community garden in Brunswick might involve swapping seedlings, comparing notes on drip irrigation, and discussing which grant applications are worth the paperwork. The Almere film captures a similar register, even though the language and weather are different. There is a recognisable pleasure in producing food where you live.
For readers in Australia who cannot make the Almere screening, several local options exist. Community gardens in most capital cities run open days, and many offer volunteer sessions where newcomers can learn the basics. Some Australian filmmakers have produced their own urban farming documentaries, often in partnership with local councils or universities. Watching the Almere film alongside an Australian production can sharpen the sense of how universal these stories have become.
What viewers can take away
The documentary's most memorable moments are quiet. A child eating a tomato straight from the vine in a community greenhouse. A retiree explaining how she learned to save seed from her grandmother. A young entrepreneur describing how the microgreens operation grew out of a hobby that simply refused to stay small. These vignettes sit at the heart of the film and are likely to linger after the credits roll.
For anyone visiting the Art House, the practical takeaways are straightforward. The screening runs for two evenings, with doors opening at half past seven and the film starting promptly at eight. Tickets are available at the door for a small fee that supports the Art House's community programming. Visitors are encouraged to stay for the Q&A, where local growers will be on hand to talk about their own plots and projects.
For viewers watching from further afield, the lasting point is that urban farming is rarely a single story. It changes with the soil, the season, the housing stock, and the people who choose to dig in. The Almere documentary is one careful, affectionate version of that story, and it rewards the hour it asks of its audience.
Local community groups in places like Marrickville, Brunswick, and Kelvin Grove continue to put on their own screenings of urban farming films, often paired with a working bee at a nearby garden. Attending one of these events is a useful first step for anyone who wants to see what an Australian version of the Almere story looks like in practice.
A simple way to support the kind of work shown in the documentary is to ask at the next community garden open day whether volunteers are needed on a Sunday morning. Most are.