Discoveries from Netherlands World Cinema

Now I Live Here consists of a video projected onto a doll’s house, followed by a light animation in the doll’s house, accompanied by a composition by Willem Cramer. The work consists of three parts: ‘Arriving’, ‘Leaving’ and ‘To Stay’. Kersten strongly believes in bringing together opposites: the small and the large, the documentary and the fictional, the pro and con, the personal and the public. Because where these phenomena come together, new things can emerge.

Princess and the Pea is about the turbulent dynamic between teenager Lotta and her parents when she’s stuck at home with depression and anxiety. She can’t, she won’t, she wouldn’t dare. Also isolated at home are Marthe and Paul, scared to lose their daughter. In a house full of misunderstanding and hopelessness the family gets help from a psychologist in their search for recognition, connection, and hope.

Little Red Riding Hood: the whole story in 1m 30sec.

Jacky (18) deceives her blind mother(48), claiming she's in the talent class for the Limburg Majorette Contest. Despite lacking all dance skills, she must now work hard to maintain this lie as the contest approaches…

In a slow and flowing movement, the video camera registers life in Leerdam.

Sergei Ovsiannikov (1952 - 2018) migrated from the Soviet Union to the Netherlands in search for freedom. While living in Amsterdam he become a priest for a Russian congregation and is still remembered as an empathic person by all who visited the church. For his children however, he is a more complicated figure, as they also remember him as a punishing, demanding father who burdened them with fear instead of freedom.

Eloi Youssef (former lead singer Kensington) and Lakshmi (singer-songwriter) each travel with their own father to the country where their roots lie. An intimate documentary about dealing with your past, the relationship with your parents and finding your own 'tone of voice' as a person and artist.

A mosaic of organic forms that tumble on top of each other.

How would you feel if you were condemned to endless, never-ending repetition? The film follows a black tourist van while a dark form crosses the forest by night. Reflected in the headlights, the trees pass quickly, like a mirror.

Surge of Transference is a video essay that investigates the expansion of the internet in a small Romanian town, where communities have formed and shifted around the newly imported Western technology. Within this micro-universe, the video traces the rapid transformation of the Internet, from the early days of peer-to-peer software to the upload of online late capitalism.

An intimate documentary focused on three musicians in the Dutch alternative music scene.

‘Gedachten aan de regen' is a coming-of-age / psychological drama film about 22-year-old David. He is trapped in the room of his head, along with his negative self-image, Ego. As a teenager, he locked himself in this mental space to protect himself from the harsh outside world. On his 22nd birthday, David thinks back to a painful childhood memory. He tries again to look for a way out and to open up. However, Ego is convinced that only death offers an escape from the chaos of the room. By seeking support from his partner, friends and parents outside the mental room, David tries to express his feelings and acknowledge his past in the hope of escape. In this process, David grows through moments of love, but old wounds are also opened. The tension between David and Ego increases and the question is whether David will succeed in breaking free

Excerpts from the feature film that examine the hidden powers that rule many parts of our lives.

When a woman puts on one of her hats to hide her bald head, memories of a painful period suddenly re-surface into reality. She and the viewer are pulled into a journey full of fear, doubt and hope. This autobiographical, animated portrait draws on fable and real-life experience to evoke intimately the far-reaching effects of a serious illness in progress. The film mixes drawings, photographs, models, objects and paintings.

Three boys are extremely bored on the last day of summer vacation, until one of them decides to steal a car.

It's Magic Time follows the vicissitudes in and around 'multi-channel experience marketing company' Magic Minds, brainchild of the irrepressibly optimistic ('On moratorium day, I play the piano') entrepreneur Erik Bartels. In a time when many good digital things must come to an end, this company converted its office for 3.6 million euros. Despite 'experience domes', a roof club and workout facilities, the relaxed Magic Minds atmosphere is soon replaced by rigorous commercialism. Sales targets and utilisation rates are not met, creditors are on their doorstep, and moneylender Nesbic is making things hot for them. After the first round of dismissals, the company gets in a free fall that leads to the verge of bankruptcy. Filmmaker Marco Zuilhof registered the developments at first hand. Negotiations, quarrels, dismissals and Bartels's fits of rage: Zuilhof was present. This makes It's Magic Time a stirring and disconcertingly concrete drama in a world of brand values and hot air.

A group of lovers is visited by a familiar guest. They remark on how this guest has turned, how they have turned and how the whole world keeps turning. How will they receive this turn of events?

A Berlinale award nominated short feature.

Alex Sophie, Emma and Robbie are best friends living in Eindhoven. Filmmaker Martijn van de Griendt follows them during the summer of their high school graduation. He paints a loving portrait of young people dealing with insecurities, loneliness, friendship and love.

A Cannes film festival nominated short feature.

Film created from the Polish Educational Archive materials, telling the story of a matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems. Originally created as didactic and propagandist tools in communist Poland, the footage is repurposed as a locus of auto-fictional memories, with their scientific register shifted towards a treatment of images themselves as specimens.

Martyrs of the Anthropocene by artist Timaeus (Tim van Hooft) questions the relationships between people and the natural world in the Anthropocene. A digitally rendered nature and the narrator regale a myth with novel heroes: lichen and trees. These protagonists are the non-human martyrs of our age, adorned as they are with minerals and crystals that are exploited as resources in a world dominated by humans.

A film by Tim Wes

A film by Elian Somers

In the midst of a blue-violet tinted mountain range are the remains of a lonely pavilion. Accompanied by the music of Max Cooper, this setting becomes the stage of a dance performance – in which our hands play the leading roles. Intuitively we let the rhythm take them over, move them playfully, form graceful gestures. At this hypnotic place everything is possible for the dancers.

A documentary presenting personal impressions of the port of Rotterdam-Europoort, showing ships, dockyards whilst emphasising the rapid growth of shipping and industry in and around the port.

A short film about perspective.

The burka is not only an item of clothing, but has also become a symbol for the reprehensible nature of the orthodox Islamic faith: anonymity, submission and oppression of women. In this short graphic dance film, however, the burka has a life of its own and plays with fear of Islam.

A girl suggests to bring her friend some KFC and a present she has for her.

Across Europe, sports betting sites are preying on the vulnerable and trying to lure them into addiction. Gambling addiction has become an emergency, a major public health issue across the globe. In many countries, gambling companies are still unregulated. This documentary exposes the ugly truth behind this predatory industry. We hear the personal stories of people whose lives have been ruined by sports betting, like Raphael who lost €750,000 in 36 hours.

The tragic effects of incest on a young girl. Possibly one of the first films made on a home pc. It was executed on the (now defunct) Amiga written entirely to floppy disks, before hard drives were available, using DeluxePaint software, in its proprietary halfbrite mode, which allowed users to use 64 colors, 32 of which were half-bright versions of the the other 32.

One of five animated fairy tales with a twist.

How do you reinvent yourself when your partner goes through a change? This task awaits Corrie. Her partner Ashley is in transition from male to female. Increasingly, Corrie wonders to what extent she can follow her partner's transition. She will have to search for who she herself is deep inside to come to an answer. Corrie wants a relationship in which her partner is mainly there for her, and not just for herself. She feels short-changed and she is done with that. With her best friend Jet, she can pour her heart out and is encouraged to keep thinking of herself as well. Yet it is not all doom and gloom. The changes offer surprising new insights into the relationship and about themselves. Hidden flaws and dormant desires for self-fulfillment surface. The new situation offers opportunities for a clean slate and reinvention of herself. It also brings Corrie and Ashley closer together at unexpected times, in ways that might not have been possible before the change.

rare vines is a diaristic exploration and an euology shaped like a Vine Compilation: six seconds per video in a gapless stream of images and using the qualifier 'rare' in its title.

Young Fathers perform live at the Best Kept Secret festival in Hilvarenbeek, Nederland

A drive and a conversation

Plagued by his many fixations and obsessions with, among other things, the weather and sounds, 32-year-old Kees Momma tries to get through everyday life. Unexpectedly high temperatures for the time of year, doors that slam too loudly, a runny nose that is picked up loudly; these are annoyances that make the life of autistic Kees unbearable. It is thanks to his mother, who supports him unconditionally, that Kees survives in the outside world, which is so threatening to him. Subject to a strict daily rhythm, he makes long journeys every day in the autumn season as a passenger of his own model train.

A short silent farce about the lazy Flip, who starts a new job as a plumber. He is immediately sent to a house where there is a gas leak.

We see images of shipbuilding, of the shipping traffic on the IJ and the Amstel, and the transfer and storage of goods.