Machiel van Hoek

A pursuit, footsteps, a house that runs off. The universal nightmare of many a refugee. This empathic documentary shows what it is like to be confronted in the dead of night with mortal fear, trauma and displacement.

How do two of the new generation’s most passionate designers, Nienke Hoogvliet (1989) and Dave Hakkens (1988), use design to tackle the world’s biggest problems?

A young, new guard begins his shift in a detention center with a bad reputation. The guard changes from a human, benevolent person to one who has no morals. Beyond The Sun is a short fiction film about the inhumanity of Syrian detention centers and the "inhumanity" of the guards.

Reintegrating into society after a prison sentence brings many difficulties with it. In Over de Drempel, we follow three participants in the new reintegration trajectory Het Huis van Herstel (The House of Recovery), a concept that uses intensive personal guidance and extra freedom to work on a return to society from prison. The big differences between inside and outside the prison walls should be reduced by this trajectory. Even though sometimes they are still quite big...

The tragicomic tableau vivant documentary "How shall we comfort ourselves." explores the endless human search for meaning. Using repurposed church buildings as the theater and everyday events as the play, we take a step back and observe humanity's absurd ways of dealing with life. From hardcore parties to yoga sessions, and from a morning mass to a gym. Hopeful coping-mechanisms we use to escape the emptiness of life. Captured within the walls of that which used to provide us with fixed frames of reference and collective meaning: the church.