Mats Bakker

After a near-fatal accident, filmmaker Guido van der Werve muses about the highs and lows of his own life as he endures a long process of recovery. Instead of a linear narrative, Nummer achttien is structured as a series of movements: it departs from the classical documentary to present us with a series of vignettes that combine past and present, existentialist despair and deadpan humour, reflection and creativity, the joys and pains of remembering and forgetting.

When there’s no money left at home and the prematurely wise Wesley (12) arrives empty-handed at the birthday party of his impressive classmate Myra (12), he decides to secretly pose as the birthday kid on a radio broadcast to increase his chances of winning the big prize package.

At the age of nine, Sam starts to realize that she is different from the friends in her class. Over the years, Sam receives many different diagnoses, except for the one thing that makes her different. At the age of twenty, after a childhood with much uncertainty, Sam finally receives the correct diagnosis: autism.