Corinne van Egeraat

Māori tribal leader Ned Tapa takes a group of friends and family on a breathtaking canoe trip down the Whanganui River in Aotearoa, as the Māori call New Zealand. The Whanganui is the first river to be recognized as a legal person. Together, this diverse group of people embraces the spirit of the river and tries to find what is needed to save the planet.

Four men from Kosovo play cowboy like they used to in their childhood and compare this to the war they have just gone through.

ANA ANA is a cinematic poem about four young creative Egyptian women. Most of the material is filmed by the characters themselves, who worked with the film’s directors in a process of collaboration and mentorship over a course of two years. The four main characters find creative ways to express what is hidden within their hearts: speaking of their dreams and desires in an extraordinarily open and intimate way, and using metaphors, and cinematic storytelling to transform the every-day struggles of their lives into the sublime. Set in the overwhelming chaos of Cairo, the film also oscillates back and forth between an empty and abstract desert, which might be real or unreal.

Twenty-six-year-old Daniel Knoop is, as he phrases it at the beginning of the film, a member of a spoiled generation of 'paper idealism'. He chooses to put his idealism into practice, and travels to Cameroon as a development-aid worker, as part of a UN project involving the exploitation of natural resources. But can Daniel make a difference in a world that is obviously not his, not in the last place because his homosexuality is punishable there? Van Egeraat followed the level-headed man from Groningen for over a year for this intimate, layered portrait, a period in which Knoop's idealism is thoroughly put to the test, both in the professional and personal sphere. The film smoothly transects these two layers, so the professional struggles (with corrupted local authorities and the impeding bureaucracy of international relief organisations) are coloured by Daniel's personal doubts and frustrations.

Cape Verde, both literal and metaphorical epicenter of a world in crisis, is where powerful hurricanes are born. On these dry, wind-blown islands, filmmakers capture the will to live through humans and animals alike. Driven by the Coriolis Effect and worsened by global warming, storms grow ever more devastating.

Burma Storybook is a parade of characters, poems and cinema verité scenes set in this enchantingly beautiful land trying to recover from six decades of fear and suffering. The main story is of Maung Aung Pwint, Burma’s most famous dissident poet, who has spent more than 30 years behind bars for his political activism. The yearning for his lost son, who lives in political exile in Finland, and his long-awaited return home after 20 years, are at the heart of the film.