Tomtit Film

From schools and offices to hospitals and streets, cleaners are working everywhere, tirelessly and modestly. They work hard and keep society running. Invisible confronts viewers with their own involvement and reveals the price paid for the appearances we cherish.

From the filmmaker's perspective, we follow the process of a possible feature film about a photographer (Lea) tasked with capturing the energy transition in Amsterdam's harbor area. This brings up a flood of memories and associations. What do you do with what hasn't gone well in your life? How well can you know someone dear to you? Filmmaker and character turn out to coincide more and more during the process.

In 2004, a urinal was voted the most influential work ever in modern art. Famed artist and provocateur Marcel Duchamp claimed to have created “Fountain”—or rather, he bought the mass-produced product and signed it—but according to some, it is the lesser-known, flamboyant Dadaist artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven who should take credit for transforming this much-discussed porcelain “piss pot” into art.

In personal reflections on her own experiences with sexual violence and in frank conversations with victims and (potential) perpetrators, Sunny Bergman shows how we as a society deal with sexual violence. Research shows that nearly a quarter of women have experienced sexual violence, but this is the tip of the iceberg. Why does rape almost always go unpunished? At the vice and in court we see how people get stuck in a system of 'His word against hers' and 'One witness is not a witness'. The new consent law is a step forward, but what makes the system fail time and time again?

What did the women and children experience in the Japanese internment camps in the Dutch East Indies? What wounds and traumas remained, and how did they cope with them throughout their lives? The camps left significant scars. Many of these have not yet healed or disappeared.

Over the course of five years, The Road to Fenix follows the transformation of a historic harbor warehouse in Rotterdam into an art museum about migration.

Filmmaker Joris Koptod Nioky moves in with his 71-year-old mother Rian to film her reflecting on motherhood. When he shows her a temporary edit, Rian is overcome by sadness and withdraws from collaboration. Her sadness quickly turns into anger that ends in a battle to have the movie banned.