“Rutger Hauer had something that few actors have: a scene that makes you immortal.”

Sana and her parents have been linked to the famous actor their whole lives ever since they met on a caravan trip, and when they met He accidentally discovered a box full of home photos and videos Captured by Hauer for decades, Hauer decided there was enough to make a documentary that would do justice to his legacy on and off the big screen.

The film “Rutger Hauer: Like Tears in the Rain” will be shown next Friday, November 14, on Filmin.It shows how an Apollonian and contemplative young Dutchman entered almost by accident into an industry that had succumbed to his nature and complete disinterest in fame, and that in addition to acting in more than one hundred and forty films, some memorable and others not so much, he came to sign one of the most remembered performances in cinematic history since the repetitive coolness of “Blade Runner.” A sci-fi classic that, as amazing as it may seem, Sana had only seen it ten years ago.

“The film is important for a documentary, of course, but I wanted to show everything that lies behind it, which is a lot, especially if we focus on Rutger as a person, and not just as an actor,” says this first-time director. “In this sense, what surprised me most was, The unexpected revelation was seeing how much he did for others.».

The documentary thus becomes a portrait of a pensive but extremely generous and kind man, in love with the luxury that fame afforded him, but also in love with nature and the austerity and inherent simplicity of life in close contact with it. “He loved sailing and climbing mountains…and he had more adventures off screen than on them.”“Because people might think: ‘This guy can’t be real,’” laughs Sanna, who once again insists on Hauer’s altruism as the “big surprise” of his research, ensuring that he doesn’t want to over-expose this aspect in the documentary “because people might think: ‘This guy can’t be real’.”

Rutgerus Olsen Hauer was born on January 23, 1944 in Brooklyn (in the Utrecht province of the Netherlands), into a family where acting was an unwritten law that he tried to escape for years. Although his father, mother and three sisters had careers in acting, he joined the merchant marine at the age of 15 and later worked in construction before joining the army, his last paid occupation (he was also a street poet in Amsterdam) before returning to the fold and making his debut in the 1969 Dutch TV series Floris.

After his unsuccessful participation in a film in the same year in which his scenes were deleted (“Monsieur Hawarden”), He rose to fame through his starring role in Paul Verhoeven’s film “Turkish Delight”. (1973), and since then he has not been short of work. In 1981, he made his Hollywood debut with “Nighthawks” (1985), and after unleashing a cult phenomenon the following year with “Blade Runner,” his blockbuster films included “Flesh and Blood” (1985), “The Hitcher” (1986), “Escape from Sobibor” (1987, for which he won a Golden Globe), and “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.” (2002). “Sin City” (2005), “Batman Begins” (2005), and “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” (2017).

“None of that changed his personality,” Sana says. “This is the source of his charm, charm and appeal. Everyone wanted to be a little like him because he was a very confident man, to a point Sometimes he generated insecurities in his interlocutors. He never liked sycophants, and if he had to disappear from public view for a while, he did so without the slightest problem.

Hauer never bragged about his successes, but he was “particularly proud of The Legend of the Holy Drinker (directed by Ermanno Olmi in 1988, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Seattle International Film Festival) and, of course, “blade runner”», confirms her granddaughter. “How many people have been involved in a film that is considered one of the best in its genre, where you have a scene that has become immortal, and that twenty or thirty years later still causes so much admiration and joy?”

That speech in the rain with which the clone longed for that particular eternal life is also a cultural element in itself that has been sampled in songs, printed on t-shirts and tattooed on his arms, reaffirming his immortality. Sana still finds it hard to believe that Rutger died in 2019: “He was a great human being in every way, and he was so free to always do what he wanted, that you would think he would live forever.”