Misja Pekel

History

Misja Pekel is a Dutch documentary filmmaker. His first documentary, about judges ruling on the future of refugees and migrants, premiered at IDFA in 2008. In the following years, he codirected many documentaries for the Dutch broadcasting cooperation, some of which were selected for international festivals. His work is characterised by an urge to understand and visualize the inner world of others.

Movies

The Insides of Our Lives
The Insides of Our Lives
Director
A poetic blend of fiction and found footage from the 1960s and 1970s. Two girls grow up along a European border. Slowly, they are driven apart and experience what it means to be separated by borders.
Grief
Grief
Scenario Writer
Cinematographic essay on transience and loss, in which the maker visually expresses her perception of a mourning process. The natural environment, once so familiar to her, has turned into a twisted twilight zone.
Maelstrom
Maelstrom
Director
Maelstrom is a poetic found footage documentary about a paradise lost, composed of Syrian amateur videos. The film is inspired by the true story of a young Syrian refugee who, in search of a new home, tried to swim from Calais to England. During this fatal journey, memories of hist past life haunt the swimmer's mind. These flashbacks form a psychological web in which he slowly gets caught. It becomes apparent that the final destination is not England, but the paradise of a lost part.