Discoveries from Netherlands World Cinema

A lonely woman sings to her laptop. Its vibrations are her companionship.

A man travels far away to get to a shattering meeting

In a post-nuclear, oxygen-ridden future, humble cleaner Juliette has her loyalties tested when she alls for Adam, a captive merman whose gills are mankind's last hope of survival.

The filmmaker explores the multiple identities that one person can possess. Do we know who we are?

A brilliant and highly poetic collection of tiny moving image moments which offers aesthetic delights through cleverly chosen camera angles, framing, lighting, montage and the materials used. This archive of trifles remains silent. The eyes begin to hear, the sound is generated in the mind. Simply enchanting.

This documentary tells the story of the industrial heritage of the 19th and 20th centuries from the perspective of "industrial archaeology." Using drawings, photographs, and both historical and new film footage, the film focuses on the disappearance or decay of monumental inventions from the recent past, such as steam engines, old railway bridges, water towers, and factories. Industrial heritage changed the face of modern society, but now seems to have been discarded itself.

Experimental animation made by using mosaic tiles.

Short documentary about life at camp Westerbork, based on the diary of the journalist Philip Mechanicus, supplemented with images by Rudolf Breslauer. Comments from the historian Jacques Presser. Mechanicus' diary starts on Friday 28 May 1943 and ends on Monday 28 February 1944, five days before he is put on a transport to Auschwitz where he is murdered seven months later (12 October) by the Nazis.

A bat marionette’s odyssey through colonial mythologies, echoing the xenophobic scapegoating of COVID-19. Puppetry becomes a tool to dissect the "uncharismatic fauna" of capitalism.

Immature is an animated documentary that explores the fluidity and complexity of gender identity through bodily imagery. Shaped by memory and imagination, it presents an intimate dialogue within the body. Fluid, fragmented, and ever-reforming, the film traces an ongoing journey of exploring gender, sexuality, and selfhood.

A dog decides to help a hen and her chicks in crossing the river, but then he lets all kinds of animals walk all over him.

Formosa depicts the landscapes, architecture, customs, culture, agriculture, natural scenery, Indigenous peoples, and colonial traces of Taiwan during the period of Japanese rule. It also reflects how the world at that time perceived and imagined Taiwan. This film is the earliest known surviving motion picture shot in and about Taiwan. This introductory documentary was donated as a duplicate print by the Netherlands Filmmuseum (now Eye Filmmuseum) in 1991. According to the museum’s records, the nitrate print dates to approximately 1922. However, based on the research of scholar Lee Daw-ming, the film may have been shot as early as 1917 by Herford T. Cowling. The exact date when the original positive film was produced and its subsequent whereabouts remain unknown. Formosa is preserved and presented by the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute in 2025.

In this work, Robert Glas brings together five criminal law students with five fellow Rotterdammers who have spent time in prison. Their meeting revolves around a text that passionately advocates for abolishing the criminal justice system.

Filmmaker Henk Penninga observers the piece of farmland right next to his home over a three-year period. Central theme of the film is the cycle of everything that comes into being, lives and changes. Music from all corners of the world is an essential part of this poetic narrative.

A documentary portraying the works and lives of Chilean street art movement Brigada Ramona Parra (BRP).

The struggle of the Dutch women's movement in the 1970s for the preservation and improvement of abortion legislation. Protest meetings, actions by Dolle Mina, political debates in the Senate, the occupation of the Bloemenhove abortion clinic, discussions on abortion migration from Germany and Belgium, and the conflict between the women's movement and Minister Van Agt.

It’s a deceivingly simple clash of image and music: You are so beautiful counterposes the Joe Cocker song of the same name with a much less accessible visual. The beautiful woman in question is immediately blocked from view by a man’s hand, which slowly approaches the camera until it blocks the entire field of view. Quite literally obscurantist, it’s a playful provocation and a sharp, ironic audio-visual quip.

Portret of the Moluccan comunity in Venlo.

To what extent are gay men 'free'? There are many countries in the world where they are oppressed and discriminated against both legally and illegally. Somos Libres!? (which is Spanish for 'Are we free?') tells the story of two young homosexuals who flee the repression of their native country to seek their freedom elsewhere. The main characters appear in various scenes that sound out their new-found freedom and are enacted in a humourous mixture of performance, theatre, music, and video techniques. Barcelona proves to be a big disappointment despite the fact that this harbour city has a traditional tolerance of homosexuals.

A celebration of Rotterdam's night culture with an Afrofuturistic twist.

Desolate landscapes in California, Arizona and Utah

The Tetterode building, a former type foundry in Amsterdam’s city centre, was squatted forty years ago. An unconventional community of almost 250 artists and other creatives still lives and works there. Although this haven remained independent of the housing market for years, the world around them has changed beyond recognition. A place to live and work is unaffordable for many people today. In Power in Our Hands, Onur Can Tepe paints a melancholic and contemplative portrait of an unusual community. The residents are growing old, and spaces are rarely vacated. New energy is needed, but where can the old guard go? The film is an appeal for diversity in housing and creative studios in the city centre. To what extent can we cling to a rich history while making room for the future?

In interlacing stories, Emmie, Amina and Anna are mobilised by a call for kindness and action in a context of social and environmental decadence. The whole trama is concentrated in a little pub where The Burners play their new song, Be Kind.

A mysterious detective wants to know more about his biological father and decides to search for answers to all the questions in his mind. He gets help from two kids who also don’t know their biological father, Duuk (12) and Maarten (11). The boys give the detective advice by sharing their own experience.

A girl tells stories about her embarrassing parents.

Through the prism of cinema, the work traces the journeys of undocumented migrants across vast lands, exploring distance as a condition of diasporic lives just as it is a position intrinsic to the act of filming. The artist invited a crew from the cinema industry of his native Lahore—also known as Lollywood—to script and direct a series of sequences, the narrative of which would be loosely based on videos found online. Recorded by migrants as they travel from South Asia to Europe, such videos give insight into the harshness of their peregrinations—which often last for years and sometimes do not reach the intended destination—as well as offering practical pieces of advice to those who have yet to depart.

An Animated Short Film about Two Music Robots are Classical and Rock.

A walk through a garden.

Every year, thousands of Chinese emigrants go to work on building sites in Algeria, living on isolated bases in the desert. Some die there, without ever being repatriated. Based on eyewitness accounts, hearsay and fake news, Marcel Mrejen constructs a parable with dystopian overtones exploring the relentless (neo)colonial exploitation of the Algerian territory.

Wild Filly Story is starring a pack of adolescent girls on a horse stable, playing out a fictional, yet custom-fit script that prompts questions of friendship, misfit, normativity, fetishization, and female empowerment. A young girl’s horse is taken away to be slaughtered that the horse community later feast on. A filly is a female horse that is too young to be called a mare.

An intimate documentary portrait of Mavi, a transgender woman who shares her experience of migration, her struggle and source of strength.

Sasha Skochilenko is an artist from St. Petersburg, Russia. She was the first to speak out against the 'special military operation' in Ukraine: she changed the price tags in a supermarket and put information about the war on them. Now Sasha is in prison, facing trial. Through the eyes of her friends Sonia and Lesha we witness the ongoing trial up close, exposing the absurdities and inhumanity of the Russian legal system, and the threats that the group of friends who support Sasha encounter in daily life. Over 18 months they await the final verdict. In November 2023, Sasha is sentenced to another 7 years imprisonment for her artistic rebellion.

Life as a painter can be so difficult. You take care of everything and yet the artwork lacks - that certain something.

Three guys with a big dream: _taking part in the Tour de France with their own cycling-team._ In this documentary you'll see how three Youtubers start their proffessional cycling team in the lowest cycling-league; Continental, and climb the ladder to the next one in just one year. Are they ready for the next step: taking part in the biggest races on the planet? This is the story of Tour de Tietema-Unibet Cycling Team.

Four (soon to be) transgender parents share their personal stories of what carrying their future children as transgender males is like.