Turkish Delight

Turkish Delight (Dutch: Turks fruit) is a 1973 Dutch erotic romantic drama film directed by Paul Verhoeven from a screenplay by Gerard Soeteman, based on the 1969 novel Turks Fruit by Jan Wolkers. It is a love story of an artist and a young woman, and was the film debut of both of its stars, Rutger Hauer and Monique van de Ven. Turkish Delight is the most successful film in the history 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, it was adapted into a musical, starring Antonie Kamerling and Jelka van Houten.