God Only Knows

Stages is a film about loneliness, anxiety, struggle and love, which in an unconventional way shows the survival of two former lovers in their forties and their seventeen year-old son.

Actress and writer Nazmiye Oral discusses with her Turkish mother everything that was previously not discussed in the family. In stylized recordings, the women show extreme frankness. The viewer witnesses what the integration process looks like within this Turkish family, making it clear what the process of dialogue, misunderstanding and alienation yields within the intimacy of immigrant families. The understandable pain of this family about the modern life of their daughter gets an accessible face.

An intimate look into the life of a 13 year old girl in northern Amsterdam who 'looses' her Russian mother and older sister to the cruel world of prostitution. Little sister remains alone in a flat at the IJ-square. Through her unconditional love and her lack of inhibition she manages to keep her head up in the relentless world of porn, drugs, and neon ads.

In 1990s Amsterdam, Loe and Bob are in a relationship, but wanting different things. Loe is a singer who likes to party and who is also engaged in migrant support. Bob is a lawyer focused on his career. As the film progresses, the tensions in the relationship become exposed.

18-year-old Layla, a Dutch girl with Moroccan roots, joins a group of radical Muslims. She encounters a world that nurtures her ideas initally, but finally confronts her with an impossible choice.

Desperate attempts by Wunderbaum’s actors to change the world radically. Not words but deeds! So they set off into the suburbs, do some urban gardening and start a crying cafe as the conclusion of their socially-committed project.

Dutch filmmakers gathered to make this compilation movie, consisting of 17 segments, as a reaction to the status quo in The Netherlands after the assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh on november 2, 2004.

The film’s genesis lies in the voluntary work De Jong did at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, where she met the Afghan twins Nahid and Malihe. Touched by their story, ambitions and talent, De Jong decided to collaborate with them.

The parents of five sisters have been married for forty years; the daughters have gathered in the family beach house to make a video for them. The encounter is marked by many confrontations as well as cheerful moments. Reminiscent of the sweet children's poems that mother recited are countered by Elsschot's Marriage: 'He thought: I'll kill her and set light to the house...' It also turns out that father had once disappeared for eighteen months, a 'secret' that the daughters have different ideas about. Brittle, an intimate film version of a play written and performed by the same actresses, is about rivalry in a family, the right to silence, but also about the need for solidarity. At the Netherlands Film Festival in 1997 the Golden Calf for Best Actress was awarded to the five actresses together.