Sam Koopman

Dutch-Canadian artist & filmmaker Sam Koopman (1992) studied and worked as a cinematographer in Canada and France before receiving his MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute. He worked on several independent feature films as a Director of Photography including Zen and the Art of Street Cinema (2015), Les vilains (2016) and Keep It in the Streets (2019). He since transitioned into developing his own work. Playing with conventions of documentary and fiction, he works with local encounters as a launching point. Through analyzing the role of his lens while exploring relationships with people and place, his films search for the intersection of comedy and calamity. His short film Dear Moritz (2023) won both Jury and Audience awards at the Rotterdams Open Doek Film Festival and Most Urgent Work award at the Eyefilmmuseum Research Labs. In 2024 he served as a guest curator for the RTM program at International Film Festival Rotterdam. He is active with community film initiatives including programming and hosting Expat Cinema Rotterdam. Work(ing Together) in Process (2025) was selected to IFFR 2025.