Amsterdam gets roughly ten weeks a year when it is warm enough and dark enough at a sensible hour to watch a film outside.
The city uses them properly.
There are four open-air programs running between now and the middle of September, and two of them cost nothing at all.
Here is what each one actually is, when it runs, and what you pay.
Pluk de Nacht, 19 to 29 August
Pluk de Nacht is the one to plan around.
It takes over the Stenen Hoofd, the disused pier sticking into the IJ behind the Westerdok, for eleven nights in late August.
The site opens at 18:00 and the film starts around 21:30, once it is properly dark.
In between there is a bar, food and a view straight down the water.
Entry is free.
In the festival’s own words, “the festival site is free to enter, so you are very welcome to join us without a ticket,” and you can watch from the terrace or spread out a blanket on the ground.
What you can pay for is a reserved deckchair, which costs €11.00 in Amsterdam including the city’s entertainment levy.
That is the only ticket most people need to think about, and it is optional.
The program is deliberately obscure: features, documentaries, shorts and animation that have not had a Dutch cinema release.
Most of it carries English subtitles, and a few of the shorts have no dialogue at all.
Two things are easy to miss.
There is a free children’s afternoon, Pluk MINI, on 23 August from 14:00 to 17:30, and a paid early screening of a classic in a circus tent on 21, 22, 28 and 29 August.
Films With A View at Pllek, every Tuesday
Pllek on the NDSM wharf runs Films With A View every Tuesday evening from May until the end of September, on the sand terrace facing the water.
Tickets are €10 per person bought online in advance, with any spare seats sold at the door an hour before.
Start times move with the sunset, so they pull earlier as the season ends: 21:45 on 11 August, 21:30 on 18 August and 21:10 on 25 August.
Three screenings remain and then the series is over for the year: The Mastermind on 11 August, The Last Viking on 18 August and All That’s Left Of You on 25 August.
Subtitles work the way they do in Dutch cinemas: English-language films get Dutch subtitles, everything else gets English ones.
If you do not read Dutch, that is worth checking against the specific film.
The evening only happens if it is dry, and a cancellation is announced by early afternoon with an automatic refund.
Getting there is the free NDSM ferry from behind Centraal Station, which runs late.
FC Buitenbios, free on Wednesdays in Noord
FC Hyena puts a screen on its terrace on the IJ in Noord and charges nothing for it.
This year the season is a straight run of Spielberg, starting at 20:45.
The dates are 19 August for Raiders of the Lost Ark, 26 August for Jurassic Park, 2 September for E.T. and 9 September for Jaws.
All four are English spoken with Dutch subtitles.
It is at Aambeeldstraat 24, a short walk from the IJplein ferry.
There is no seat reservation, which on a warm Wednesday in August means turning up early.
Films in the Amsterdamse Bos, 6 to 8 August
The Bostheater, the open-air amphitheater in the Amsterdamse Bos, is a theater venue for most of the summer.
For three nights it becomes a cinema instead.
Cinetree’s Forest Festival runs 6, 7 and 8 August: Captain Fantastic on the Thursday, the Italian hit C’è ancora domani on the Friday and the award-winning I Swear on the Saturday.
The site is wheelchair accessible and dogs on leads are welcome.
It is the only one of the four where you are watching a film in a forest, which changes the experience more than you would expect.
Our guide to the parks covers getting out to the Bos.
Two places people expect films and do not get them
The Openluchttheater in the Vondelpark is an open-air stage, not an open-air cinema.
Its summer program is music, theater and children’s afternoons, with no film screenings.
The WorldPride open-air film festival on the Mercatorplein was free and well attended, but it ran on 29 and 30 July and is finished for this year.
It is worth watching for when the Pride program is published next summer.
What to take
Every one of these is outdoors and next to water, which means it is colder at 22:00 than the afternoon suggested.
A coat and something to sit on cover most of it.
None of the four sells reserved seating apart from Pluk de Nacht’s deckchairs, so arriving in the last ten minutes usually means standing.
For the rest of the year, our guide to Amsterdam’s cinemas covers the indoor options, including the ones that show films in their original language.
