Peter Warnier
Is it morally acceptable to use the civilian population as yet another tool for waging war? Is it possible to justify death and destruction for the sake of supposedly lofty ideals? The question remains as pertinent today as it was at the beginning of World War II, and it is becoming increasingly urgent to answer, as countless tragedies have been caused by unethical political decisions.
The Amazon flows lazily through the goldmine-gashed landscape of northern Peru. Using real eyewitness accounts, directors Bénédicte Liénard and Mary Jiménez tell the story of a young woman who winds up in the clutches of forced prostitution when her initially hopeful attempt to escape the constrictions of her village goes wrong. Step by step, she is robbed of her moral and physical integrity. The film reconstitutes a space of dignity and returns voice and identity to a fate formally made nameless. With its powerful imagery, the girl’s traumatic odyssey embodies the destruction of life in a capitalist world in connection with horrific natural devastation.
In the historic Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, despite the cruel war that has been raging since 2014 between the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Ukrainian government, people tries to survive in the rotten heart of chaos, where violence disguises itself as peace, propaganda becomes univocal truth and hatred reigns in the name of love.
A top executive who can't bear to regard himself as a loser, even after nearly dying in the New York marathon; a woman unable to cope with the loss of her wealthy status after her divorce; and an ambitious financial couple confronted with their unresolved family matters. Every Sunday, in their upper class Bloemendaal church, the cutting sermons of reverend Ad van Nieuwpoort shake their faith and existence to the core. What drives people to be crushed by the weight of their ambitions?
Every spring, there comes a day when women appear on the streets wearing skirts. Love is in the air on skirt day and the film follows sixteen colourful characters who attend a ‘Cooking Class for Singles.’ They hope to find their match during cooking speed-dates. Will ambitious lawyer Marijke win from her sexy best-friend Danielle? And is the shy Edwin able to put to practice what he learned through lessons on ‘how to seduce a woman’? And what about the founders of the Cooking Class: Alexandra and Bor. Is their marriage as good as Alexandra so desperately needs it to be? We follow them and other characters in this modern day romantic comedy on their collective journey in finding true love.
Ushi Hirosaki has to marry according to Japanese tradition before her 30th birthday. Because time is running out, her family decides she has to marry a huge sumo wrestler. A rather unfortunate combination, so Ushi wants to look for a nicer candidate herself. She travels halfway around the world to find her dream husband. Along the way she does valiant efforts, for example to learn table manners and to lose her Japanese accent.
When Molly, the 21 year-old sister of Maarten, departs the family home, she leaves her older brother with empty nest syndrome. But it also opens up new opportunities for him, such as the possibility to explore his love for Arthur, a closet gay. Molly and Maarten wrestle with their personal relationships and also their relationship with one another, but fate nevertheless seems determined to strike them both down.
In 1984, Ate de Jong, Dick Maas and George Schouten founded The Directors, a band made up of movie directors. Later on, more directors joined and so did actors, actresses and singers. This documentary follows the band members at home, on the set, at rehearsals and during performances. It’s a story of friendship, opposing characters, growing old and ambitions and illusions. Anecdotes and archive films provide a hilarious flashback on the lives of the film friends. Time has treated them well. Everybody is or has been successful. To rough it all up, they decide to write a song that will be played at one of the band member’s funeral.
Maassen won two of the biggest comedy contests in the Netherlands in 1990, the Groninger Studenten Cabaret Festival(GSCF), and Cameretten. The GSCF jury was not pleased with the quality of the contestants that year, and gave Maassen the first prize, remarking he was the best of the year, but still not very good. In the following years, however, Maassen fame grew steadily, especially amongst students. Maassens style was based on stand-up comedy: Alone on stage, telling jokes and stories to amuse the public, without any musical support (a thing common for most Dutch comedians up to that point). Since 2000, Maassens shows are shown on Dutch national television, making him more and more a household name.
