Jan-Willem van Ewijk was born in the charming city of Delft, Netherlands, in 1970. During his childhood, he spent his formative years in both the Netherlands and California, where he developed a profound fascination with aviation and space exploration, inspired by the iconic Star Wars franchise.
After returning to Delft in 1989, Jan-Willem pursued his passion for aerospace engineering at the esteemed Delft University of Technology, ultimately graduating as an accomplished aircraft designer seven years later.
Prior to his foray into filmmaking, Jan-Willem worked at renowned companies such as Airbus, Beechcraft, and Bombardier Aerospace. He also served as a strategy consultant for Monitor Company and played a pivotal role in the establishment of Antfactory, a dot-com era investment firm that rapidly expanded to a global network of 14 offices and over 200 employees within a remarkably short period of less than two years.
In late 2002, Jan-Willem made the bold decision to leave his job and commence writing the script for a full-length feature film, "Nu.". He founded Propellor Film to support the production of the film and enlisted the talents of his old university friends, former colleagues, and family members as cast and crew. The film was shot in the evenings and weekends during the summer of 2003 in over 40 locations across the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
However, soon after, funding issues arose, and Jan-Willem was forced to take on a full-time job to finance post-production. Over the next three years, he struggled to complete the editing of the film. "Nu." was finally released at the 2006 Dutch Film Festival, where it received an honorable mention. The film went on to win the grand prize for best film at the European Independent Film Festival in Paris in March 2007 and was selected for the First Film World Competition at the Montreal Film Festival in September 2007.
Jan-Willem was subsequently selected to participate in the prestigious Sundance Lab in June 2009 with his second feature film project, "Land.", which was later renamed "Atlantic.". The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014 and received a nomination for a Dutch Academy Award for Best Cinematography. In 2014, Jan-Willem also began working on his third feature film, "Sleep.".
