Witfilm

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.

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

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.

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

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'.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

“When I told my mother a boy was hitting me on the playground, she said: ‘That’s because he likes you.’” So begins this exposé about femicide, with the sentence appearing in black letters on a bright red background. The film shows three women who survived abusive relationships—by becoming murderers themselves. Laura from Finland, Rachel from the Netherlands and Rosalba from Italy explain how and, more importantly, why they killed their partners. One speaks eloquently, another haltingly, but all three are candid.

In His Image focuses on reproduction after death in Israel, where posthumously harvesting sperm is legal. The film follows the bereaved parents of three sons who died during military service. Using semen collected just before, or shortly after, their sons' death, they hope to have them live on in a posthumous grandchild. But can new life cure their grief?

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.

The young conductor John Warner (27) and the musicians of Orchestra for the Earth are going to Austria, searching for the deeper meaning of the magical Gustav Mahler composition "Das Lied von der Erde". They refuse to take an aeroplane, since its CO2 emissions are too high, which contributes to Climate Change. Therefore, they travel by train. The Orchestra for the Earth wants to draw attention to the theme of Climate Change with their music.

Lieke, Marieke van der Winden's mother, was closed, insecure and fragile. After she died of cancer at the age of 48, Van der Winden was approached at the funeral by Lieke's foster brother. She learns that her grandfather and grandmother – of whom she has wonderful memories – were wrong in the Second World War. This fact, which had played an enormous role in Lieke's life, had been kept secret for decades. Only thirty years after that revelation Van der Winden dares to delve into her mother's history. In conversations with family and friends, she gains a whole new perspective on Lieke and on her own childhood. And when she searches the archives for her grandparents' activities during the war, the shocking revelations pile up – with major emotional consequences.