Witfilm

In 1969 Amsterdam, two idealistic roommates fall for the same free-spirited young woman, pulling them into a heady world of hippie dreams, artistic rebellion, and emotional turmoil that tests their friendship and the ideals of free love.

By exploring the relationship between the watched and the watching, our film uncovers the trauma and hope engendered by the Chinese all-surveilling state and lends a voice to those that stand in resilient defiance of such blatant abuse of power.

Two-time Golden Calf winner Paul Cohen (Janine, 2010) takes a personal and cinematic journey through postwar Europe. Based on his Jewish father, Bram Cohen, his diary entries from the Japanese internment camp, and previously unseen archival material, Paul Cohen paints a picture of post-WWII Europe through his father's eyes. A poetic documentary about guilt, shame, forgiveness, and compassion, with universal significance.

In the Bijlmer, in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, every culture has its own rituals around death. Funeral manager Anita has the task of attracting all those cultures to her soon to be built multicultural funeral home in the middle of the Bijlmer. Anita sets out on a tour to get to know this unfamiliar world. But the deeper she penetrates, the more she realises how little she knows about the Bijlmer’s different cultures.

During an intense emotional crisis towards the end of his life, Vincent van Gogh spent one year in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, a mental institution that exists to this day. The female patients who stay there now mostly spend their days painting, like Van Gogh used to. Here, Van Gogh painted many of his famous works and wrote numerous letters. In this exploratory documentary, the present-day patients write a letter back to him. Where and in what ways do they find comfort?

How do Dutch actors in the post-#MeToo era look back at intimate scenes and what do they think about the arrival of the intimacy coordinator? From her experience as an actress and filmmaker, Tamar van den Dop talks to several past and present icons.

The Bi Issue follows poet and activist Zaïre Krieger in her search for what it means to be bi, in identity, love, and faith. While working on a poetry collection about this inner struggle, Zaïre balances between worlds, each wanting to claim a different part of her. Among her friends, at work, in the ballroom scene, with her mother, and in church, everywhere, different rules and expectations apply. But what happens when these worlds collide, and parts of herself are no longer accepted?

The living room of a couple in Limburg is full of statues of saints, crying over all the bad news filing past on their television screens. But while nobody believes them, the two self-proclaimed 'little prophets’ are preparing for the imminent time when their rented house will become an international place of pilgrimage, including a healing spring.

Vetri decided to find her fellow former child soldiers. They, like her, fought for the independence of the Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka. Talking together, they open up the traumas of war and reveal stories that were meant to be forgotten.

After twenty years, Wiam Al Zabari starts a conversation with his father. Why did they flee from Iraq? Why was that never discussed? Will he be able to let go of the past and embrace a Dutch future?

Shadow Game is an experimentally filmed account of the far-reaching consequences of European asylum policy. Now fences have gone up all over Europe, seeking asylum has become almost impossible. The teenagers cross snowy landscapes and meet aggressive border police on their way. Reaching their final destination has become more difficult than ever. Their journey takes them through the whole of Europe: from Greece to North Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Italy to France and The Netherlands. The film was shot over a period of three years, partly by the main characters themselves on their phones.

A growing group of Dutch people in their twenties see the earth becoming less livable. They join the climate group Extinction Rebellion and campaign to fight the climate crisis. There is little they shy away from in their struggle: nightly campaigns, high-altitude actions, and even arrests or a criminal record. Everything for a better planet.

A film about the feeling of immortality of a group of young friends who lost one of their best friends. During a short trip, they seem to party unrestrained. But how does the harsh confrontation with death resonate in their lives?

From backstage to the stage, from the magic of an opera to the depths of a documentary, Inside My Heart pushes the boundaries between the rehearsal process and the performance, at the heart of a troupe of professional actors with intellectual disabilities. A radically imaginative film that uses all possible cinematographic means to make the romances, conflicts and questionings of these actors palpable with lightness, literally sucking us in with them in a baroque drama with fairy-tale overtones. Through the themes of homosexuality, eroticism and the relationship to the body, Inside My Heart questions the way we look at things and what we might take for granted.

Dance is by far the most important thing in 14-year-old Skip’s life. He’s got big ambitions, so whenever he gets the chance to take part in a dance competition with his all-boys group the Rhythm Rangers, he’s completely committed to the rehearsals at the local dance school.

Artistic director of the National Theater Eric de Vroedt writes and directs a performance about his own mother Winnie, who passed away in 2020. This piece, titled The Century of My Mother, is a family story about the migration from the Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands. It is De Vroedt's way of examining the relationship with his mother and not having to say goodbye to her yet: 'I can let her live on stage, but when the curtain falls, when the play is completely finished, then she is really dead'.

The 14-year-old Malak, Celia, and Jae travel with their parents to southern France for a summer without school, homework or daily duties. At the campsite, they can be who they want to be and do whatever they want. One looks for the company of her peers, the other withdraws into the online world with her smartphone and the third stays permanently in touch with her boyfriend. Intimate, dreamy, and recognizable documentary about infatuation, insecurity, and that complex period between childhood and adulthood

How do Europeans deal with their recent dark history (the wars, dictatorships and occupations)? What traces are etched?