Bolletjes Blues

Documentary about teenage mothers, their boyfriends and their babies.

Beaten and hardened by life in a Nigerian ghetto, Charity leaves for Europe to work as an illegal prostitute. She is saddled with her younger sister Happy, whom she ruthlessly initiates into the world of prostitution. Happy resists her fate, jeopardizing Charity's dream of becoming rich. Together with other unregistered women they endure hardship, exploitation and humiliation with resilience and song, until one day it all becomes too much and they revolt, singing their fury from the rooftops.

One warm summer night, in a working-class area of a big city, a group of teenagers sits on a square. Jill, a teen girl, undergoes her first sexual experience as an everyday banality.

A Europe film entirely shot in Africa? Listen to the tragic stories of unwilling sex workers who wanted to or had to leave the coldness of Europe. Warm and colourful as only Africa (in this case Nigeria) can be. A sound, committed documentary. As it should be.

One warm summer night, in a working-class area of a big city, a group of teenagers sits on a square. Jill, a teen girl, undergoes her first sexual experience as an everyday banality.

A modest and loving portrait of a small enclave of old-fashioned beach huts by the North Sea. The sound track is fragments of conversations with the inhabitants, who themselves are not seen on screen; the protagonists on screen are the huts, the beach and the sea. And, only a stone’s throw away, the heavy industry of the Hoogovens furnaces.