Melle van Essen

Two teen track stars discover first love as they train for the biggest relay race of their young lives.

An elegiac documentary following virtuosic clarinettist and composer Kinan Azmeh, a Damascus-born musician living in exile, as he attempts to find meaning and purpose after the outbreak of war in Syria. A profound exploration of the role art can play in forging identity and community.

Set in the remote winter landscape of Norway, Roos visits her mother there yearly, but this time it’s different: she brings bad news. However, old pain and numerous reproaches keep Roos from sharing anything with her mother. Aided by her half-brother and her old flame, the two women reconcile and Roos is able to make her next and inescapable step.

Television adaptation of Frank Groothofs theatre program 'Idomeneo'. In this youth theatre production (a playful adaptation of Mozart's opera), Groothof plays all the roles.

The film tells the tale of Iala, whose authority over his two sons, Raul and Bedan, is shaken. Raul has left to study in a seminary in the big city, where unknown to anyone, he has joined the liberation movement. Meanwhile, younger son, Bedan is rebelling against every possible tradition, even eyeing his father's young bride-to-be.

On the idyllic island of Lipari near Sicily a few traditional swordfish hunters are still active. The days are over where these fishermen were self-evidently succeeded by their sons. On board Nino’s ship, the reigning peace is not what it appears to be. The twelve-man crew that mans the small boat is in complete concentration. They peer at the water surface, looking for their prey. While the diesel engine stamps monotonously, the hours pass and we wait patiently. Then an excited noise erupts from the crow’s nest: a swordfish couple has been spotted! Lipari pays homage to an almost extinct profession.

Fifty years after being dance partners in their twenties, two pensioners find themselves torn between romance and their disapproving families when they reconnect and fall head over heels in love.

Lin, a long-distance swimmer, is training for a cross-channel swim when she encounters Henri, a deep-sea welder, who, like her, thrives on danger. Drawing each other deep into an intense love affair, they forget that lovers too can drown.

From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a president, the sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala’s recent history is told through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.

A retired police detective sets out to find his missing granddaughter.

War and violence leave behind the dead, the wounded, the maimed, the victim and the witness. In ECHOES OF WAR, children left behind in Afghanistan, Colombia, Sierra Leone and New York take us into their lives and share their memories, nightmares and dreams. A Colombian boy takes us down the road where his hand disappeared. In New York, two girls tell us about their father, who worked on too high a floor of the World Trade Centre. We meet a girl in Afghanistan who struggles to remember her father of whom even the pictures were burned. In Sierra Leone a family on their way to a well is attacked, leaving a girl behind who has no idea what the rebels were fighting for. A boy in the Colombian jungle dreams of becoming a doctor. A girl in a besieged city is determined to become president of her country and outlaw all weapons. The children reveal these stories by listening to the tale of a little elephant who tries to find the courage to live with the death of his father.

Romy’s mother has to work a lot. That’s why Romy goes to her grandmother every day after school. Grandma Stine is very busy working in her hairdressing salon, and is very strict. But everything changes when Romy discovers a totally different side to her grandmother.

By the year 2000, half of all young people in Amsterdam will be of immigrant origin. The government aims to promote integration requiring that 70 percent of newly hired employees of the Municipality of Amsterdam be either of immigrant background or women. Mene Tekel examines the consequences of this policy within the Amsterdam Fire Brigade. Without using interviews, and instead relying on observation and a narrative structure resembling a feature film, the documentary shows how the policy affects recruitment and training. Sons from long-established firefighting families are no longer automatically eligible for a position. Meanwhile, newcomers of immigrant background often find themselves entering the fire brigade almost as a result of well-intentioned efforts by social support agencies. Once there, they undergo extensive testing and initiation, because when the alarm sounds they may be confronted with death, and firefighters must be able to trust one another completely.

Director Scheffer registered a performance of the Tea Opera by Chinese composer Tan Dun (who won an Oscar in 2001 with his score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Scheffer interlaces the images with interviews with Dun, stage director Pierre Audi and librettist Xu Ying, about the opera and the role tea and oriental philosophy play in this work. Using monochrome, sometimes abstract images (in yellow, blue, red and green), close-ups of plants and flowers and images of the Chinese nature and people (sometimes accelerated or decelerated, sometimes in black-and-white), he mirrors the stylised opera performance and Dun's reflective music.

To inform each personally about her impending death, Mies summons her three daughters home. The three half-sisters April, May and June, each of whom has a different father, start to question their lives: "Where are we at in life? What do we still have in common? What will happen to our autistic brother Jan?"

When memory comes is a film about the Jewish histoirian Saul Friedländer (1932, Prague) and his endeavour to describe the extermination of the European Jews without losing nor repressing the primary feeling of disbelief. It led to a new and unique historiography that gave a voice and face to victims, bystanders and perpetrators alike.

From the filmmaker's perspective, we follow the process of a possible feature film about a photographer (Lea) tasked with capturing the energy transition in Amsterdam's harbor area. This brings up a flood of memories and associations. What do you do with what hasn't gone well in your life? How well can you know someone dear to you? Filmmaker and character turn out to coincide more and more during the process.

A story of destinies joined by Guatemala's past, and how a documentary film intertwined with a nation's turbulent history emerges as an active player in the present.

The full title of this Dutch film is Pervola: Tracks in the Snow. A stockbroker moves away from his home village of Pervola and puts his two sons in charge of his business. Older brother Hein (Bram van der Vlugt) cheats younger brother Simon (Gerard Thoolen) out of his share, claiming that Simon was disinherited because he is homosexual. Hein grows powerful, while Simon seems to weaken with each passing day. Flash-forward several years: the dying stockbroker calls his sons to his side. Faithful Simon agrees to dad's wishes that he be buried in Pervola, but Hein doesn't want to go to the trouble of transporting the body; he finally agrees to help Simon, out of fear that his brother will learn of his long-ago treachery. While arduously journeying to Pervola with the father's body strapped to a sled, Hein inadvertently confesses; Simon, however, is of strong enough moral fibre to forgive his brother.

A sturdy flight attendant has to deliver a child in mid-air and gets involved in a confusing mother/lover relationship with a boy who's living under the streets of Bucharest.

Carefully composed portrait of prominent modern composer Elliott Carter (1908-1912). Scheffer depicts both the person and the development in his music and the musical tradition it grew out of, as well as the time in which the American Carter grew up. The result: historical images of the city of New York, old film footage, cinematographic finds to illustrate the music and statements by conspicuous fellow-composers and musicians, including Pierre Boulez and Daniel Barenboim.

Seven friends meet up for dinner and decide to play a revealing game. During the evening deep personal secrets will surface and threaten their relationships.

A portrait of Naples and its inhabitants, in the words of the Neapolitans themselves. Two women gossip about a woman who committed suicide; a man sells tickets for a local tombola; a woman concerns herself about her elderly neighbour. By moving from person to person, the documentary gradually portrays this enigmatic city at the foot of the Vesuvius. James Baldwin once returned a writing assignment about Naples, because he utterly failed to grasp the city. A Neapolitan says: `Naples is a kaleidoscope of thousands of different souls. Their total defines the Soul of Naples.' The leitmotif is Caravaggio's painting Seven Works of Mercy (1607), made for an aristocratic charity that still exists. The documentary mirrors Caravaggio's clair-obscure in its patterns of poverty and wealth. Age-old alleys with subdued light contrast with the glittering chic of a genteel club. Slow aerial shots and poetic texts in voice-over interweave the separate stories.

Five lively kids use art to escape from the Mandela Park township in Cape Town, South Africa.

A dark world of well-organised drug crime is hidden behind the calm life of Brabant. Jara and Rens both come to discover that when upon return to their birth province after a long time. She wants to clear the name of her father, he wants to distance himself from his criminal family - but they both get terribly entangled in the web of the upper and underworld, whose boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred.