Jesse Vogelaar

Jesse Vogelaar blames his dry, awkward sense of humour on a Dutch upbringing — speaking Dutch at home, eating dinner "too early," and eventually following his father's palm-tree obsession to the Gold Coast. It tracks. His comedy finds sense in the nonsensical, and lands somewhere most directors can't reach.

His signature is atypical casting: alt-comedy talent and untrained performers, coaxed into exactly the right kind of strange. He borrows from improv and clown, filters it through an early foundation in animation, and comes out with something surreal, deadpan and quietly precise. FilmInk described his most recent short as "Step Brothers if it were directed by Yorgos Lanthimos" — which is about as good a summary of Jesse as anyone could write.

His films have screened at Sydney Film Festival, Palm Springs ShortFest and PÖFF, been picked up by NOWNESS and Vimeo Staff Picks, exhibited at GoMA, and acquired by SBS and Canal+. His commercial work — Specsavers, Samsung, Mobil — brings that same off-kilter comic instinct to brands brave enough to be genuinely funny.