Directing
This snackbar, owned by Ali, in a suburb of Rotterdam is a refuge for the local Moroccan youth. They are wild, violent and criminal. To them Ali is like an old, trustworthy Turkish uncle, understanding, funny but also strict. But what if Ali, with his addiction to gambling jeopardizes their habitat?
The 12-year-old black girl Ella is deprived of safety, opportunities, and freedom. Ella discovers that she has lived multiple lives in Ghana, Curaçao and Surinam as the immortal, extraterrestrial Xoxo. In this magical realistic feature with elements of science fiction, a paralleled world is created from where the aliens observe human thoughts and feelings.
Lost in an industrial district, a delivery boy asks directions to a solitary welder. Things take a turn for the worst when he is fired, and his van refuses to start. The two men seem to be condemned to each other. The unexpected intimacy appears not to be a misfiring spark.
Who am I? What is real? How to live in the madness of the world? These are questions posed by six people who have had psychosis and speak openly about their experience. They have in common that they think deeply, and that at particular moments in their lives, they were under intense personal and social pressure.
Ever since she found out her husband Evert was having an affair, Foekje has been living in a hotel she cannot afford. In desperate need of money, she has a plan. The area surrounding her mother’s house is being bought by the government for large sums of money, and Foekje can collect this money by having her mother Nel sign a power of attorney. Unfortunately, Nel is a doomsday prepper who lives in her basement in anticipation of the apocalypse.
We follow several cleaners in their daily battle against dirt. Floors are mopped, toilets scrubbed, a car washed, windows polished and a lawn cleared of leaves. These are everyday, unavoidable and universal forms of cleaning that play an obvious role in everyone’s life. Only here, the setting is highly specific: the car turns out to be a hearse, the lawn a cemetery and the interiors those of a crematorium. The everyday tragedy of cleaning is thus placed in relation to the fundamental tragedy of death.
In FEAST, perpetrators, victims and their spectators become involved in a dramatic reconstruction of the Groningen HIV case. The film tells a story about power and surrender, the reversibility of truth and the desire to come home somewhere.
The conflict between a shopkeeper and his mother escalates. There is violence he will regret. A naive passerby questions the tension using film references. A comic ode to suspense cinema.
