Movie coming of rental car owner who rescued cars from Iraq
The adventures of the Ijsselstein car rental agency owner Mark Stroop who chased a couple of car thieves to Iraq in 2013, will be made into a movie.
“It’s a unique story that also happens to be universally recognizable,” said movie director Hanro Smitsman (Skin, Schemer). The movie will be called Stroop. Oak Motion Pictures will produce the flick. The screenplay will be written by Willem Bosch (Van God los, Feuten). Which actors will star in the movie has not been announced yet. Mark Stroop who owns Silverline Rentals in Ijsselstein made headlines in January 2014, when he returned from Iraq with his black Opel Cascada and silver Volkswagen Golf, that two renters had driven to Iraq. The story read like something from an exciting modern-day detective novel that started with one Sherzad and one Mehmed renting a black Opel Cascada and a silver Volkswagen Golf from Silverline in September 2013.
“They had never seen this before in Iraq; some Dutchman who drove over to come look for his cars,” Stroop told NLTimes in January 2014. He had just returned from the war-torn country, chasing his vehicles though Turkey, over the border into Syria and then onto the Arbil Province in Iraq, accompanied by a friend and an ALK-47 toting Iraqi. “Before we left the friend put a Kalashnikov on the backseat and said it was important to have. That’s when I really knew where I was,” Stroop said. Eventually they located the cars in Durhak and after he proved that they were indeed his, he was allowed to leave with them.
“(My cars) were brand-new when they were stolen and now they have 10,000 to 15,000 kilometers on them, but also a great story. Maybe that will bring a little extra income to my company, but honestly that is not why I went to get my cars back.” “Stroop tells an urgent story with a lot of actuality, that has the potential to be an exciting, funny and touching movie,” said director Smitsman about the movie he is now setting out to make of the rental owner’s adventure. The movie will be in cinemas 2017
