The Producers

Director – Elena Lindemans

Elena Lindemans is a Dutch documentary director. Her first documentary was about her mother, who suffered with mental illness and, after a rejected euthanasia request, committed suicide. The documentary Moeders springen niet van flats (2014) won the Dutch Psyche Media-Award and prompted a hearing in the Dutch parliament. In addition, her documentary Ik heb het niet gedaan (2019) – about Romano van der Dussen who wrongfully spent 12 years in Spanish prison – was nominated for a Golden Calf at the Netherlands Film Festival.


More recently, Elena made a documentary series about the Dutch mental rehabilitation clinic for criminal offenders, called In de TBS (2023). In 2024, she will be releasing the series Een goede dood, where she follows six individuals trying to receive euthanasia due to endless psychological suffering.

Making The Film

This is a topic that really speaks to the imagination: women starting relationships with men who are locked up for serious and even gruesome crimes. I always wondered: what possesses them to do such a thing? What do they get out of it? Is it love? And if not love, then what is it?

Almost five years ago I met a Dutch woman named Yolanda. She perfectly matched the image that I had of these so-called "death row dollies": a middle-aged single woman, who, out of curiosity but also out of loneliness, started writing to an American prisoner and after only a few letters fell head over heels for him. After a year, Yolanda and Billy were married behind glass.

Their entire love life, almost a decade now, has been playing out in the letters they write to each other. In essence, their love is much like how we know it from medieval times, a sort of “courtly love.” Their love life is platonic since the barriers between them can’t allow them to be physical. An unattainable love, one that could be considered "unconditional."

Yolanda’s relationship with Billy is full of things which would not be sustainable in most modern-day relationships. No sex, enjoying time together or speaking in private, no vacations and no one around to be genuinely happy for you. And as if that wasn’t enough: Billy’s impending execution means that eventually Yolanda will be on her own again. In short, the sacrifices that Yolanda is willing to make for her love for Billy are far-reaching. What does it bring her? I, for one, can’t get away with calling Yolanda an eccentric or brushing her relationship with Billy off as an oddity. Because that would sell her short and wouldn’t do her story justice. I cannot conclude anything else other than that their love seems genuine.

Elena Lindemans, Director