Germen Boelens

As a boy, Jamal was kidnapped from a rural area of Sudan to fight in a war he did not want anything to do with. A fight against his own people, which eventually took his leg and his freedom. While working on a prosthesis with filmmaker Pitou Schütz, Jamal explains how losing a leg brought him to the Netherlands. This results in a story, partly visualised through animation, about his flight from brute violence and his search for a new future.

A foreign musician unexpectedly arrives in a picturesque Dutch village. The hotel owner offers this tourist a suite, coincidentally for the same amount as what he owes the baker. When the hotelier receives the amount in cash, he can finally settle his debt. Next, it turns out the baker also has an outstanding balance, etcetera. In this absurd comedy about the circular economy, it is clear that constantly making and settling debts brings unanticipated consequences.

Hassan and Mourad travel to Syria to search for their missing brother Yasin. As they try to follow Yasin’s trail through Jordan and Syria, Hassan and Mourad are involuntarily involved in the Syrian conflict. Will the brothers, despite the confrontation with the atrocities of the war, be brought closer together and the disintegrated family be reunited, or has the war wounded irreparable wounds?

Dutch-Kurdish Ceylan is living the perfect life; and has a nice boyfriend, Bastiaan. However, the war in her homeland is fighting for her attention. She no longer can handle watching the misery on TV without taking action. Therefore she decides to become 'Peshmerga' and say goodbye to her secure life with Bastiaan, maybe forever.

10 Year old Imad grows up in a warzone. Together with his mother Halima he hides at home. If one day he finds a bird with a broken wing, Imad brings it home. The birds recovers, but the war rages on. Then Imad is faced with a choice: should he keep the bird, or let it go?

In the late Seventies, a Dutch teenager named Frankie, who is the son of a holocaust survivor, lives in a working class area in Holland. Frankie’s mother is taken to hospital in a terminal condition, causing a bigger rift between him and his father. This leads to Frankie becoming the interest of the local Nazi skinhead group.

A young couple in love, Robert and Sarah, get engaged in the park of their hometown. Soon after, World War I throws Robert into the trenches where a gust of wind blows away not just Robert's letter to Sarah, but the couple's future as well. Post-war, Robert struggles to come to terms with the changes in the world and the rapid growth of the city he calls home. He once again finds solace in writing letters to his lost love, and does so every day for decades.