Discoveries from Netherlands World Cinema

Observing light in the month of december.

The story of an unlikely friendship between a young boy and an old lighthouse keeper.

Short film by Madelon Hooykaas and Elsa Stansfield.

“Make it look real,” the clients of a photo studio in Pakistan urge the photographer. They want a photo of themselves with girls, and preferably holding a gun or sitting on a motorcycle, even though they have none of these things. So their photos are pasted onto stock photos. In a sense, these studios are selling a lie, but at the same time the photos bring to light the dreams and ambitions of their clients.

Two friends share fantasies about being swallowed and becoming a giantess.

After a night of dancing (raving) to the famous Dutch gabber music, Yoran and his buddies take the first train back to their homes. Along the way, Yoran tells how being a "gabber" helps him deal with the problems from his past and how he is coping with life.

In this modern version of an ancient Russian folk tale, a humble bun runs away from its makers to avoid being eaten. The little round loaf tumbles through the hands of a host of hungry characters in the modern Russian urban jungle. Seen through his freshly-baked eyes, the artefacts of the Soviet empire loom large as we are plunged into a maelstrom of comic references to Russian life and culture, in which archaic film and folk customs survive among the mechanical guts of a modern city.

When Kees visits his life companion Arnold in the nursing home, he struggles to make any meaningful contact with him. Still, Kees is shocked to hear that advanced data measurements indicate a critical decrease in Arnold’s sense of joy in life.

Entering from the intimate and often complicated relationships between fathers and sons, Dreams of My Father explores memories and visions from God, gods, and ghosts and their reverberations in family lives.

A woman looks back on her life, through narration and song. In Mother Suriname – Mama Sranan, filmmaker Tessa Leuwsha uses a stream of fascinating colorized archival footage to illustrate the lives of Surinamese women like her grandmother, who was a washerwoman.

When two people meet on the subway, their lives take a turn and they end up on a rollercoaster of emotions, touches, words and love.

The living room of a couple in Limburg is full of statues of saints, crying over all the bad news filing past on their television screens. But while nobody believes them, the two self-proclaimed 'little prophets’ are preparing for the imminent time when their rented house will become an international place of pilgrimage, including a healing spring.

What is 'a mother' really? Does Google provide an unequivocal answer? Wikipedia? Friends perhaps? The latter call it 'coming home' or 'someone who’s always there for you'. Now that his sister, twenty-five years after their own mother passed, is expecting her first child, filmmaker Wieke Kapteijns decides to examine the 'mother' concept. For the first time in his life, he has to venture into unknown territory and face up to long-suppressed grief

A young woman is desperately looking for the right person in her life through Tinder. When one of her dates takes an unexpected twist, the question remains whether she’s finally found what she’s been looking for.

A parade of every day objects, made with minute attention to detail.

During Queen Vilhelminas coronation.

On Akhmeteli St. #4 in Tbilisi, Georgia, there stands a decrepit apartment house the director of this documentary once grew up in. After 10 years spent abroad, he returns to capture the daily life of his neighbors on camera. the author quietly observes their private stories and examines how they are able to find happiness despite economical hardship and how they preserve their personalities and humor in spite of disillusion. Artistically, the film is based on the house as a microcosm metaphorical of today‘s Georgian society.

Poetic feature about the last Dutch horse-drawn barge making a journey through the landscape of Holland with its mills and canals. A man is leading the horse along the tow-path. On the aft deck of the vessel is the skipper, two women in traditional dress and a man chewing tobacco. In the fo'c's'le is a young woman staring wistfully into the distance. On the roof of the cabin, a man is playing accordion. The woman at the stern talk together and sometimes they point at the sad girl. In one version of the film there is a glimpse of the young woman walking arm-in-arm with a young man while being spied upon by another woman. While the people on board are occasionally shown in close up, the landscape glides past te spectator at the gentle pace of a tow-boat.

Propaganda film in three parts for Kinabu, a Dutch charity based in The Hague that sends sick or underweight city children to recuperate in the countryside.

Grandma is having a rough time. She runs back and forth as a drudge between a crying baby, his mother who is on the phone (and wants grandma to refill her coffee) and his father who reads the paper (and continually needs a light). Nobody says anything, but grandma is driven up the wall by the sounds and dreams of a quiet summer's day. In partly coloured black-and-white drawings, this short animation shows the essence of what psychologists call the 'grandma-as-a-slave-syndrome'.

Seek Bromance is a cinematic performance showing a transformative relationship between two transmasculines who have very different attitudes as to what masculinity can be. A trans romance situated at the end of the world.

In Amsterdam, a single mother loses her little bed & breakfast due to the COVID pandemic and longs for the sense of togetherness she lost. She ventures through her displaced friends and migrant communities to find that elusive feeling of belongin

Made in Amsterdam in 2011. You see the image of an Urban Landscape. The camera work is taken in one shot from a static position, the moving parts of the film are the clouds, the smoke, the birds and the moving trees in the wind. The smoke clouds are from of the coal-fired power station Hemweg Centrale. It is closed since the end of december in 2019. The narration is from Defoe's "The Life and Strange Surprsing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", written in 1719. The text is an excerpt from page 47: (..) We knew nothing where we were, or what country were we driven to, be it an island or the main, inhabited or uninhabited (..) The film is made from a visionary view of the landscape that has changed over time. And not knowing where we have ended up in this world. Clouds are formed by smoke, we can no longer tell the difference. The film touches on subjects such as the makeable world, time, change, industrialization, the ignorance of humans and the preservation of nature.

'Kamperen met God' is a documentary about the evangelical-christian camping "De Betteld", which is located in The Netherlands.

As the start credits indicate, the film is a tentative edit of shots from 1936. After showing a car ride across the dunes and the fierce waves of the sea, this unfinished film shows the pleasure at the beach on a sunny day. On the seashore, young and old enjoy the sun, sand and sea. In a quick succession of images with sometimes surprising camera angles and movements, the film shows the seaside fun. At some moments, the filmmaker makes links by using evocative cuts. For example, recumbent seaside visitors are linked with basking pigs and a dangerously swirling sea displays a skull.

"De Boontjes" shows a double portrait of Rodney and Mitchel. Rouph, Rotterdam-born Rodney has 23-year-old Mitchel reintegrate in his coffee bar. When Rodney is in direct contact with Mitchel, he seems to look in the mirror by seeing a younger version of himself. His mission to let Mitchel return to society is inextricably linked to his own childhood wound.

The video ‘Carte Blanche’ has been inspired by the painting ‘The Blank Check’ by René Magritte, in which a rider on horseback appears to be intertwined with a row of trees. As well painting as video deal with archetypes and interpretation. Literally and figuratively do both ask the viewer “What do you fill in for what you don’t know?”

"Neerlands Nieuws / Polygoon Profilti" "Het Proces Rauter Opens with the trial of Hanns Rauter, an Austrian who was the highest SS official in Nazi-occupied Holland and who was tasked with setting up Westerbork and Vught. The judge's voice, presumably reading the indictment, over footage of well dressed civilians wearing stars either arriving at Westerbork or boarding for deportation to Auschwitz or Belsen. Men, women, and children. Good shots of Dutch military police on duty. Back to Rauter sitting at the trial. Men wearing wooden clogs getting off train at Westerbork lining up next to rail cars. At trial, evidence presented and witnesses called (sync sound). People climbing aboard railcars with armbands, large wheeled litter goes by. Sophia de Groot at far left of the door opening on train wagon #9, gesturing to someone on the platform. People waiting to board clustered around open car.

Adventures of a Dutchman in the Mississippi Delta. Cheesehead Blues Re-Cut is a music documentary on the state of the blues set in Clarksdale, Mississippi, birthplace of the delta blues and second home of Theo Dasbach, founder of the amazing Rock & Blues Museum. In 2011 filmmaker Jan Doense set out on a musical road trip in the Deep South of the U.S.A. While visiting Clarksdale – home of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Ike Turner among others – he met fellow Dutchman Theo “Boogieman” Dasbach, a former international banker who had been sacked by his employer and then decided to move his enormous collection of blues and rock & roll memorabilia from Arum, Friesland to Clarksdale, Mississippi. This became the Rock & Blues Museum, one of the must-see attractions for any music lover visiting Clarksdale.

The deeply socially engaged documentary filmmaker Frans Buyens had long dreamed of making the transition to fiction filmmaking. The experimental Ieder van Ons was a first attempt in that direction. In essence, it was an inquiry film shot in a cinéma vérité style about appearance and reality in social commitment. With Ieder van Ons, Buyens wanted to jolt the viewer’s conscience and make them aware of the duty to face the truth and to act accordingly. To achieve this, he combined a fictional plot with documentary scenes. On the one hand, the film contains acted sequences about the awakening conscience of a ruthless political figure; on the other hand, Buyens himself appears before the camera to introduce several actors, their characters, and the situations in which they are about to become involved.

The painter Frank Lodeizen filmed at work and in his surroundings.

Dutch society is turned upside down when pedophile Benno L. is released after four years in prison.

Leonardo and Anselmo are both eleven years old and live in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. It is the summer of 1994, the World Championship Soccer is held in the USA, and Brazil is the favorite for the world title. Leonardo and Anselmo dream of becoming professional soccer players, to escape the poverty and violence of their slum. They fantasize of being able to organize a barbecue, once they have made it. Some of their friends want to become fishermen, but when they go boating on the lake, they find a corpse in the water (victim of yet another drug-related crime). Leonardo and Anselmo play for the team of Nova Saffra, a home for poor kids. But when a scout of a famous team arrives, everything might change: he invites both Leonardo and Anselmo to play a test match. During this once in a lifetime opportunity, Anselmo forgets his shoes and his father is nowhere to be found. Leonardo realizes he will have to make a tough decision

Registration of the third theatre program by the Dutch comedian Claudia de Breij. De Breij transforms into a timeless variety star, entertaining the troops in Germany ánd Irak.

Hollandse Tulpen en Klompen – litterally Dutch Tulips and Clogs – consists of two short fragments each describing a traditional facet of post-war Netherlands. The first fragment shows men and women working on the tulip fields. The second fragment shows children playing at the Island of Marken, wearing the traditional costumes of their hometown.

Filmmaker Art van 't Rood grapples with self esteem and confidence. He invites friends and family to find out how a feeling of self worth is created.