Rob Rombout

Directing • 1953-07-08 • Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands

Rob Rombout (born in Amsterdam, 1953; raised in Zaandam) is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and teacher, based in Brussels since 1975 and now also in Lisbon. Since a 1978 student film he has made some forty works, many broadcast by ARTE, RTBF and France Télévisions: films set in closed worlds that move, such as a night train to Moscow, a transatlantic liner and a North Sea oil rig, and films about places that borrowed a name, among them Amsterdam Stories USA (2012, with Rogier van Eck; IDFA; Audience Award, IndieLisboa 2013) and On the Track of Robert van Gulik (2016). His method is the subject of Marc-Emmanuel Mélon's monograph La mise en scène du réel (2022). He taught documentary directing at Sint-Lukas, now LUCA School of Arts, from 1988 to 2018, and was a founding member of the DocNomads master and its course director in Brussels, 2012–2019. His photographs, collected in PORTRAITS / on the road (2024), have been shown in Paris, Lisbon and Bredevoort.