Poorten van Europa

In 1946, Anaïs López’ grandmother abandoned her two small children and left for South America with her Nazi lover. Or so the story goes. Photographer López browses through genealogical databases, combs out the internet, takes DNA tests, makes discoveries and dives deeper and deeper into this ever more complicated case. Everyone tells a different version of the history. But the deeper she digs, the more she loses grip. How important is it to know your family history?

When he was just 14, Sajid Khan Nasiri fled Afghanistan alone. After a two-year journey filled with danger and hardships – which he minutely documented on his phone camera – he arrives in Belgium to seek asylum. There, a whole new struggle begins. Intimate sequel to the prize-winning Shadow Game.

Shadow Game is an experimentally filmed account of the far-reaching consequences of European asylum policy. Now fences have gone up all over Europe, seeking asylum has become almost impossible. The teenagers cross snowy landscapes and meet aggressive border police on their way. Reaching their final destination has become more difficult than ever. Their journey takes them through the whole of Europe: from Greece to North Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Italy to France and The Netherlands. The film was shot over a period of three years, partly by the main characters themselves on their phones.

A pursuit, footsteps, a house that runs off. The universal nightmare of many a refugee. This empathic documentary shows what it is like to be confronted in the dead of night with mortal fear, trauma and displacement.

For every child it is scary to be the new kid at school, but if you come from another country and do not speak any Dutch at all, it must be terrifying.

Samrawit was just eight years old when she decided to flee Eritrea on her own—leaving behind her parents and younger siblings. She was all alone. On the way she often wondered if she'd done the right thing. Should she go back home, or keep going? How could she live without her mother? And was she safe?