Nouchka van Brakel was born in a socialist family which lived a fairly bohemian lifestyle: her mother was a singer and her father was a jazz musician, and they lived in Turkey for two years. She went to high school in
Bilthoven, living with her mother while her father was abroad. she became the first woman to attend the
Netherlands Film and Television Academy, which at the time was housed at Oude Hoogstraat 24, around the corner from her house in Amsterdam's
Nieuwmarkt district. Van Brakel's second movie,
Zwaarmoedige verhalen voor bij de centrale verwarming (1975), was produced by
Matthijs van Heijningen, who was responsible for launching the careers of a number of notable Dutch directors, including van Brakel.
Van de koele meren des doods, another van Heijningen production (he produced a great number of adaptations of literary works) was a success, and established her reputation. After 1987's
Een maand later, her career seemed to falter. Her 2001 film
De Vriendschap, with a set of elderly main characters, focused on male friendship and female sexuality, but the film was a critical and commercial failure, which strongly affected her. She considered leaving the industry altogether, but returned in 2006 with a documentary on Mary; years before she had gotten fascinated with Mary, who in her estimation seemed unhappy in many depictions of the
annunciation. She began collecting reproductions of paintings, many of which are shown in the 2006 documentary
Ave Maria; Mary, she says, was an independent and educated woman who is politically important as well. In 2018, she published her first book, Scenes uit mijn eigen draaiboek (Scenes from my personal screenplay) which was awarded with the Louis Hartlooper Prize for the best film publication. ==Feminism==