Crossing

More than thirty years ago, Louis van Gasteren made the documentary BEGRIJPT U NU WAAROM IK HUIL? about a therapeutic LSD session that professor Jan Bastiaans did with a traumatised ex-prisoner of German concentration camps. The patient died in late 2000 at the age of 81. He left a wife and three children. Poignant conversations with the widow and youngest son, and excerpts from letters from the other two children reveal that a concentration camp syndrome can also inflict deep wounds in those who have not personally experienced it.

Jacqueline van Vugt follows the Kurdish-Dutch Shapol Majid. She opened the first lingerie store in Northern Iraq in 2014. Various generations of women tell their vulnerable stories about love, sexuality, culture, faith, war and freedom.

REFUGE tells the story of three illegal Afghan boys in Holland who are searching for their future and identity as homosexuals or Christian. They are supported by Dutch pensioners who help them to survive and to find their way through Dutch society, rules and regulations.

Two Loves is a poem written by Oscar Wilde's lover "Bosie", Lord Alfred Douglas. This documentary depicts the love and war between these two men, bringing each other down, in a time when homosexuality was still unheard of and even strictly forbidden by law.

The Rey Gitano Circus in Guatemala is a genuine family business. After their father’s death, the five Lopez brothers run the operation with their mother. However, the widow has resolutely taken over at the helm, which makes it hard for the sons. But her strict management style and frugality bear fruit: the circus grows, the audiences come flocking in. The brothers all play different roles during the show: Christiaan has his tigers and Paco does a trapeze act; Jim is a clown and Jerry entertains the crowd as the ringmaster. The more business flourishes, the more tensions rise among the brothers. They all dream of starting their own circuses, being their own bosses, but none of them has yet succeeded. One ill-fated day, Paco leaves the circus, abandoning his family. But the appeal of circus life appears too strong, and blood turns out to be thicker than water.

A film about borders and border checkpoints, poetically following the people that come into contact with them - one way or another. Borders is about men and women dreaming of a better life in Europe and the high price they often have to pay for it - if they succeed at all. Without taking an immediate moral stance, the film follows the route that many immigrants take from the heart of Africa to the centre of Europe, stopping at each border: Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal , Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, France, Belgium, and finally, the Netherlands.

For multiple generations from a small Bosnian mining town, the dark coal mine Breza is the fulfillment of professional dreams and a symbol of progress, as well as the cause of the biggest tragedy. Sakiba, an enthusiastic woman with strong opinions, stands tall among the majority male miners. She can’t get her head around division of jobs to ‘female’ and ‘male’, an opinion she has fought since she landed a miner’s job at the age of nineteen. Walking down the dark tunnels with loose safety regulations, she talks about appreciation for natural light and retirement, when she hopes to try some new mindfulness techniques her colleague reads about online. Sakiba was never welcome to drink along a male colleagues in a local bar when payday comes, but she ends up dancing to the beats of well-known Yugoslav rock band celebrating her hero.