Jolke Van Aerde

On a tram ride along the coastline, Robin looks back on her turbulent relationship with Ada. Unspoken words are all that’s left, the broken pieces cut like glass. But why are they not sharp enough?

A pianist drives around a forest landscape, wandering in search of her way. A way to let go of memories. Letting go of the woman of her memories. Like a wind, they blow through her mind, mingling and enriching the music that propels her along her path. Her longing on the tip of her tongue and the end point of the journey.

At her sister's funeral, a young woman is distracted by a something from the woods.

Over the course of eight years, the film draws an intimate portrait of Jean Ciesielski, a teenager growing up in Antwerp. Moving through a succession of schools and educational tracks, Jean searches for a place within a system that has defined him from a young age. At twelve years old, he speaks about his situation with a striking maturity and clarity. As he gets older, Jean feels an increasing urgency for change. Unable to obtain a regular secondary school diploma within his current track, he decides to change schools once more. His journey reveals how strongly the language and expectations of education have shaped the way he sees himself and his place in society.

In her film 1000 Girls, A Place We Go, Sietske Van Aerde leads viewers through a series of playful transformations. Inspired by the nymphs of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who are constantly shifting shape due to the cruelties inflicted upon them by the gods, the film follows several individuals searching for ways to exist in a world that can often feel heavy. Van Aerde films her own surroundings, capturing friends, artists, and other passers-by as they speak about themselves. We witness a variety of internal portraits unfolding.

A sick child spends its numbered days confined to bed, waiting for Death to come. Silence slowly fills its room. The curtains veil the nights in blue. As Death moves closer, a series of strangely familiar visitors pass by. We are taken on a fantastical journey through a child’s dying dreams. A fairy tale unfolds.

Twelve-year-old Zlata has to find her way in Belgium after she inevitably had to flee the war in her home country, Ukraine. Her father, Petro, and Findus, her cat, stayed behind, Mother Ira and little brother Martin came along. Step by step the adolescent girl explores not only her new living environment, but also her own identity. Awaiting the uncertain arrival of her father, Zlata slowly opens up.

A hauntological exploration of Northern Ireland’s landscapes and the remnants of its occupied past, blending together eerie archive footage and voyeuristic location shooting as a ghostly figure lingers through the shadows of a long-abandoned military fort.

Alia shares an apartment with two friends. They spend the strange period of lockdown together, while also going through the painful process of mourning their friend's death.

After reading Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims, in which the author returns to the working-class village of his childhood, Kumail Syed realised that his life was shaped through a very different experience of class than those around him. Up until that point the filmmaker had denied his background. When he realised that his rejection was an insult to the reality that his parents had experienced, he decided to revisit the neighbourhood of his childhood. Les enfants ont des oreilles bears witness to Syed’s class of origin through the form of a filmed diary. It shows what the working class can represent today through tableaux vivants from the neighbourhood, as well as through the testimonies of the director and his mother, and the people he encountered during his return.