Zeppers

This poetic, erotic film devotes a visual hymn of praise to the female body.

On the idyllic island of Lipari near Sicily a few traditional swordfish hunters are still active. The days are over where these fishermen were self-evidently succeeded by their sons. On board Nino’s ship, the reigning peace is not what it appears to be. The twelve-man crew that mans the small boat is in complete concentration. They peer at the water surface, looking for their prey. While the diesel engine stamps monotonously, the hours pass and we wait patiently. Then an excited noise erupts from the crow’s nest: a swordfish couple has been spotted! Lipari pays homage to an almost extinct profession.

The mystery of the author of the 1937 cult novel Ali and Nino - a recently-rediscovered Romeo and Juliet of the Caucasus - is explored in Alias Kurban Saïd. Renowned Dutch documaker Jos de Putter travels from Azerbaijan to Austria to the U.S., chasing down who wrote the book under the pseudonym Kurban Saïd.

A personal documentary by Denise Janzee, made in an attempt to get closer to her mother Willeke van Ammelrooy. On movie sets and on screen, Denise saw her mother cry, laugh and fight. At home, however, Willeke shut herself off when she was sad. “I’ll only come back out once I’m smiling again. Such is my way,” she used to say. The only time Denise really saw her cry was at the funeral of her father Leendert Janzee. He committed suicide when Denise was six years old. His decision to do so wasn’t unexpected, but his death nevertheless meant the ultimate loss for Willeke. She had wanted to let him live through her love. She feels defeated and locks herself in until she is ready to face the world again. Meanwhile she expresses herself through her characters. In this compelling film mother and daughter look back on this deciding and emotional period in their lives, illustrated by home movies.

A documentary about the Dutch band Racoon and their search for a perfect song.

The slogan “Meet the icons of modern art” needs to be scraped off the glass wall of the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s modern art museum. Because precisely who the icons of modern art are is very much the question. Who gets to decide? And who loses out? In 2019, as director Sarah Vos started shooting her documentary, more than 90 percent of art at the Stedelijk was made by white men. That’s got to change, the museum’s director Rein Wolfs believes. But this is easier said than done—so much becomes clear when Vos follows Wolfs and his team as they strive for greater diversity in the collection, as well as among their staff.

An intimate portrait of the Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer, best-known for The Vanishing (1988).

Five lively kids use art to escape from the Mandela Park township in Cape Town, South Africa.

Mentally exhausted Ukrainian soldiers spend a few weeks away from the frontline before returning to war. In this psychological limbo, their reflections reveal how deeply the war has changed them, leaving scars they will carry for life.

One day, Dutch film maker van der Horst was given her inheritance: 6 square meters, one sixth of a small, wooden house in the Russian countryside where her mother grew up. It was as if life had handed her a card she felt forced to play. She began a journey into the past, back into the childhood of her Russian mother and her five sisters, all of whom struggled with fear, famine and war in Stalin’s Russia; experiences that left them scarred to their very soul. Aliona’s quest into the lives and fate of her family becomes a loving, poignant, and poetic film with Chekhovian characters. Accompanied by the magical animation of acclaimed Italian artist Simone Massi, unimaginable events in the Soviet past are given an immediate charge. Along with the stories of ordinary people living in the small farmhouse, the film maker tells the tale of Soviet terror, immense bravery and a fear that has never left those four walls.

A heartfelt search for Ben Ali Libi, the main character in an iconic poem of the late Dutch poet Willem Wilmink.

Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) served as a diplomat, collected Chinese lutes and invented Judge Dee, yet his own country barely remembers him. Rob Rombout travels from the Netherlands to Indonesia, Japan, the United States and China, through diaries, archives and the people van Gulik still haunts. Somewhere between biography and detective story, the man and his hero merge.

In 1990, the beheaded body of a young woman was found in a Rotterdam canal. The body remained unidentified until 2008, when new DNA techniques revealed that the victim was the American model Melissa Halstead. A joint investigation by the Rotterdam cold case unit and their colleagues in the United Kingdom led to John Sweeney. Sweeney is known to have a tumultuous relationship with Halstead – as evidenced by the many lurid drawings he made during their time together in Amsterdam.

This film is a triptych with three stories, involving three characters. They live in different parts of Europe: Western Europe -Catalonia (Spain); Eastern Europe -Lithuania; and in the new Europe -Georgia (Akhazia). They have experienced, in different parts of the 20Th century, civil wars and dictatorships. They share the same fate: they stayed where they were born. This film is about people who decide to do nothing in times of war, oppression and occupation. They choose a life amidst the ruins of their past. Even when this choice leads to loneliness: living a dream, not a reality. Alone, between the graves of their loved ones, they spend their last days. They have frozen their lives by protecting themselves from the outside world.

In How to Meet a Mermaid, the sea becomes a haven for mankind, locked in its struggle with its 'indifferent universe'. Lex, Rebecca, and Miguel each have their own reasons to lay their lives in the hands of the capricious waters. The question remains, however, whether they will find what they so anxiously seek underneath the surface of the waters.

Man is busy, busy, busy. Until we lie down flat on our backs for a while, in the dunes, in a farmyard, beside a fire engine, in the park or on the banks of a canal. Watching the bank of clouds drifting by or the planes forming persisting contrails in the sky, daydreams, outpourings and contemplations inevitably bubble up. With the sky as a mirror for prostrate man and with the lying man as a mirror for the viewer, this documentary draws a loving portrait of human beings briefly making contact with themselves.

For four seasons, lone wolf Eddy van Wessel travels along the Ukrainian front lines. Now that the Netherlands' most awarded war photographer is in the twilight of his successful career, he wants to take the ultimate photo one more time, the image that summarizes the entire conflict and that makes all the struggles, traumas and setbacks he has endured worthwhile.

A family must come to grips with the suicide of their eldest son. What drove the outwardly relaxed and happy Arie to his deed? For two years we follow his younger brother Gijs, mother Denise and father Arjan while they try to turn despair into meaning.

Is living in the big city as impersonal and lonely as some say? Why is it so hard for New York women to find Mr. Right? This charming documentary follows Annie, Leigh and Laurie, three single women who know what they want, on their quest to find Mr. Right.