Stijn Deconinck

As the world attempts to grapple with the strange new reality precipitated by COVID-19, essential workers are risking their lives daily. This guerilla documentary, shot in Brussels Erasmus University Hospital during the first few months of the lockdown, tells their story.

As the world attempts to grapple with the strange new reality precipitated by COVID-19, essential workers are risking their lives daily. This guerilla documentary, shot in Brussels Erasmus University Hospital during the first few months of the lockdown, tells their story.

As the world attempts to grapple with the strange new reality precipitated by COVID-19, essential workers are risking their lives daily. This guerilla documentary, shot in Brussels Erasmus University Hospital during the first few months of the lockdown, tells their story.

Apatity, a far-north industrial town in Russia, first came into being as a USSR concentration camp. Although its environment is at the brink of ecological disaster, the people here still believe in the state’s promise of immortality that can be gained through sacrificial service to the fatherland. This is how the elite in a totalitarian state buy a person’s will, strength, talent and, indeed, life, turning the human being into another resource that is as faceless as a grey lump of ore. ‘I cannot fight big corporations or state structures with a film. But I hope that there is someone in the darkness of the cinema whose heart will get a bit warmer after seeing it,’ says the director. The larger part of the film was shot during the polar night.

Marie Wankelmut, once successful comic artist, lives among the prostitutes in Amsterdam's Red Light District. Nowadays drunken and bold, she gets into one conflict after another. A gruesome sobering event at her neighbors, forces her to take action.

Mainstream media have described the Brussels district of Molenbeek as the "jihad capital of Europe," after several suspects in the terrorist attacks on France and Belgium were revealed to have been recruited from its large Muslim community. In the heart of this troubled neighbourhood, Coiffure Zaïdi, a barber shop sitting just opposite a mosque, serves as a meeting place for locals of all ages. This is where award-winning director Sahim Omar Kalifa installed his camera, capturing casual conversations between clients of North African origins. As shocked and dismayed by recent events as anyone else, they discuss unemployment and failed integration, immigration policies and government surveillance. With a fly-on-the-wall approach to these animated debates, and a keen, humanizing eye for the most significant details, Kalifa composes a charming and vivid tableau of a population continually stigmatized and circumscribed by media stereotypes.

A group of Kuchi children are living in a minefield around Bagram airfield, Afghanistan. They dig out anti-personal mines in order to sell the explosives to child workers mining in a Lappis Lazulli mine. The trajectory of the blue precious stones goes towards Tajikistan and China, through an area controlled by child soldiers. When they are not waging their own mini-wars in the daily madness of life in Afghanistan, the children are fleeing away in their personal fantasies and dreams, while the American soldiers are planning their retreat...

Stef moved to a new home, but there is another man in his home, Theo. Theo is the previous owner of the house, he died a few years ago. Stef seems to be the only one who can see him.

Kain reflects in a contemplative way on our human condition. It's an audiovisual meditation on the cruelty and suffering of our tragic humanity. A short film about guilt and the birth of conscience. - Berlinale Short Competition 2009