Kees Vlaanderen
Lots of villages in the Frisian area of the Wadden Sea have to deal with population decline. In Holwerd, a town that is known for the ferry terminal to Ameland, a bottom-up approach towards this problem is carried out right now, in order to find a solution for the population decline using the landscape, history, culture and ecological values of the area. In 2013 a group of people from the small town of Holwerd stood up to fight for the future of their hometown, and started a project. The project is called “Holwerd aan zee” (Holwerd at sea) and aims at bridging nature and culture by means of landscape art.
For all Frits, a farmer's son, knows, his mother died when giving birth to him. He and his father make up a strong team. In the literal and figurative sense, because his father not only teaches him to milk the cows and hunt, he is also the coach of his soccer team. The happy tide turns when the boy turns eighteen and is scouted as a promising soccer talent. Suddenly, Frits's future is no longer with his father on the farm, but on the green grass of the Nijmegen soccer club NEC. His son's splendid soccer career may be the crowning glory of the farmer's hard work, but he is afraid he will also lose his only child. Desperate, he reveals the lie with which he raised his son. Frits is bewildered and makes a dramatic decision.
