Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht

Revo secretly doubts his faith. When his father asks him to go on a pilgrimage together, his long-held secret threatens to put their close bond at risk.

Cubes of cheese, slices of sausage, a piece of weak cake. Family members questioning your life choices, disapproving looks, one too many glasses of wine. For Nena (27) a typical family birthday. The whole family in a circle, waiting, silent.\r Three birthdays in a row, she takes her new partner Jip with her. Each time she is overwhelmed by a load of criticism from her mother, she will have to learn to deal with it.

The imaginative Bo (9) lives as the only child in a street full of extroverted adults, who think she is quiet. Her parents try to include her in the group, but Bo prefers to fill pages of crafts about the neighbors in her homemade 'humancyclopedia'. When another kid named Rups comes to live in the street for the first time, Bo tries to prove herself by putting her humancyclopedia aside and starting a friendship with her. In this way, she wants to prove to her judgmental neighbors that she is more than just quiet. 'Rups' is a film about the silent power of the introvert and the magic of fantasy.

James leads a lonely life in a luxurious castle in which his parents run a hotel. He never goes out with friends, spends his spare time in his room and peeks at the hotel's guests out of boredom and curiosity. Chased by his controlling mother, who only wants him to finish his homework, James is more interested in the group of handsome Swedish soccer players staying at the hotel. When he finds one of the boys injured at the hotel's swimming pool, James offers his help and smuggles the boy into his room and locks the door. Locked up with a strange boy in his own room, James experiences the complexity of his own sexual feelings for the first time.

Siljan is a young writer who accidentally discovers that he is adopted. After a confrontation with his adoptive parents, he embarks on a search for his roots, a quest that leads him to his native Macedonia. What awaits him here is the last thing he expects.

The Ysbreeker family -- mother Jolien, father Frank, daughter Roos and son Teun -- are enjoying their annual holiday on a camping site in France. Teun is at the beginning of his puberty and can't quite control his hormones. Roos, a teen girl in the middle of her puberty, is more interested in her first camping love than in her own family. Teun notices that his sister is becoming a woman, in all different ways. How does he react? Does it have any influence on the brother-sister relationship?

Twelve-year-old Kai and his best friend Thomas are inseparable. Together they are everything, alone they are nothing. Until the first day of the new schoolyear, when a new girl is in their class that Thomas fancies. Short drama sees Kai frenetically trying to win back his pal. He gradually loses control and makes a choice that will determine the rest of his life.

Short animation by Gerrit van Dijk

The blue depths of the swimming pool is her home. Keesje is a passionate synchronised swimmer, and the big competition is just around the corner. However, when a fight erupts between the girls during the final rehearsal, everything changes.

A short fictional film about a boy struggling with his feelings.

Short coming of age film about friendship. To what extent can you be guided by desires without losing each other? Billie and Momo have a quirky friendship. During a scouting competition in the woods, they discover that they have different expectations of their relationship. This means the match will have a different outcome than they expected.

A young boy moves to a new neighborhood and falls in love, for the first time, with the much older girl next door.

Eighteen-year-old student Isra embarks on a final weekend trip to one of the Wadden Islands with her depressed father. She has just received the news that she will be able to move into a student room. While she feels relief, she is also anxious about sharing the news with her father and leaving him alone with his depression. She hopes to see him happy during this last weekend together, so she can move out without worrying about him. However, when Isra shares her plans, it takes them both time to grasp what this change means. Amid feelings of guilt and fear, they search for a new way to redefine their relationship. Eventually, Isra realises that letting go might be as much an act of loving, as staying.

Becoming the best version of yourself, the goal everyone consciously or unconsciously strives for. Everything can always be better, more beautiful, bigger, faster. Nowadays silence is the only time we can relax, but the world we live in is actually never quiet. There are noises everywhere and excitement everywhere. What can we learn from silence? In this film, a group of young adults spend a weekend together in silence at a Zen Buddhist monastery. They drink tea, clean, walk around and meditate together. The birds whistle just a little louder, the cutlery and plates sound like a radio play while eating, and in the wind you can find different kinds of noise. As time passes, you sink, along with them, deeper and deeper into that clear silence. 'You Are Already Here' takes you into a meditative experience in which you can ask yourself where you are going, and more importantly, where you are now.

Two guys in their early twenties, a hitchhiking Dutch student and a Swedish police officer with a broken police car, meet each other on a Swedish country road. On their way to the gas station, their suspicious understanding gradually changes.