Patrick Minks

Portrait of laureate architect Herman Hertzberger as a passionate, humorous, and modest man whose vision on what architecture means for people and society is valuable to this day.

A young couple employed by a pet crematorium finds fulfilment in respectfully removing cadavers. Their love blossoms in an environment where the boundaries between human and animal are fading. When they hit a stray dog, their relationship starts to derail.

Based on the struggle of young people in Goma (Northeastern Congo) against the prevailing Western reporting about war and misery, Stop Filming Us investigates how these Western stereotypes are the result of a skewed balance of power. Stop Filming Us creates a cinematic dialogue between Western perceptions and the Congolese experience of reality. While the Congolese perspective becomes increasingly clearer in the film, questions arise about the perspective of the film itself; is a white director able to make a film about the new Congolese image or is it primarily a story created by his own Western perspective?

Recording Nguyen Thi Thanh, the only survivor of Phong Nhi Phong Nhat massacre, where civilians were killed during the Vietnam War. Having lost all of her family at the age of eight and survived by herself, she is an open witness to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians and demands an official apology from the Korean government.

In 2014 actor Michel van Dousselaere (Gent, 1948) was diagnosed with a rare form of progressive aphasia, a brain disorder that affects the language center. The film shows how he deals with this loss of language and of the profession he practiced for more than 30 years. Against all odds Michel takes on one last role. His wife Irma Wijsman helps him to find new ways of expression and to stay focused. In their search, friends and colleagues draw close and talk about the unimaginable situation of no longer being able to grasp the words that elusively disappear. Showing the events in the first years after the diagnosis, the film makes clear how language defines our identity and what it means to redefine oneself. But foremost the film shows two powerful people who take control over a dramatic turn in their life. Acknowledging the sorrow with humor and undying love.

Following her mother's death, an 11-year-old indigenous Australian girl named Shay moves with her father and brother to Belgium. Shay finds that her grief is readily accepted in her new town, which still bears scars from World War I.

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.

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.

The movie follows Rajai, a Ford Transit driver which is the most popular transportation in the Palestinian occupied territories (occupied by Israel). While taking a ride with Rajai, we experience the frustrating situation the Palestinian need to deal with. On our trips from the roadblock in Ramallah to the roadblock in Jerusalem, we get to hear analysis of the situation by all kinds of random transporters, people from different religions, origins, and levels of class.

About a largely unsung writer of the twentieth century: John Fante, the renegade author whose highly autobiographical novels illustrate his deep-rooted love of Los Angeles and his struggles working through poverty and prejudice.