Sarah Jonker
The painting Pim worships during his nightly work as a museum guard leads him to inspiration; He sees the life he desires as a brilliant light behind a giant wall, as alluring as unattainable. Pim takes action, but nothing happens in the way he had hoped. Circumstances force Pim and his relatives back to their essence.
Olivier calls himself a 'statistical miracle'. He is almost 27 years old but the doctors had predicted that, because of the heart disease he was born with, he would not get much older than 25 years. He doesn't seem to be suffering from the threat of death closing in on him. With unbridled energy, he parties, smokes, drinks and dances until deep into the night, and in the morning wakes up in bed next to girls he doesn't even know. His family and friends alienate from him because of this life style, and the fact that he doesn't have long lasting relationships, doesn't bother him. Olivier lives, day by day. Until new medical technologies make it possible to cure him, and a new future opens up to him. Everybody is happy, but Olivier doesn't know how to deal with the expectations and responsibilities of his new life.
What happens if you take the law into your own hands, start correcting the legal system on your own initiative? Hans Croiset, André van den Heuvel, Bram van der Vlugt and Kitty Courbois in their roles of aged resistance heroes do not think this is such a bad idea; in fact, it is what they already did during World War II. Back then, they formed a sworn resistance gang. The occasion for their renewed fighting spirit is the brutal robbery and murder of Marjan, one of the members of their former group. Past and present start blending. In a controlled tempo, alert to detail and acting, a story unravels that focuses on Hans Croiset in the role of Simon, a retired teacher of Dutch. He makes contact with the underworld, meeting the Slavic Goran, who starts feeling sympathy for the old man. Eventually, fate lies in Simon's hands.
Koen is a fatherless, eighteen year old boy who wants to free himself from the suffocating relationship with his mother. He struggels with the balance between independency and love. When he meets Colet, he tries to keep his distance, but she is both anarchistic and audacious. She does not understand the fact that Koen does not have the slightest curiosity about his unknown father. It is because of her that he begins the search for his father.
The Dutch Roos and the Turkish Rana are two adolescent bosom friends who divulge all their secrets to each other in a diary. Whereas the philandering Roos is more interested in boys than in school, the reserved Rana tries to make the best of her study. The girls are very different, but share the desire to become famous, as well as the fact that at home nobody understands them. Roos' single mother is working all the time and Rana is completely fed up with her mother's traditional upbringing. When Rana's brother reads a passage from the girlfriends' diary to his mother, the situation escalates. Rana is put under house arrest and is no longer allowed to associate with Roos. For the girls, this is the limit: they take the first train to Turkey. The long journey becomes one great adventure, which not only puts their friendship to the test, but also brings about great changes on the home front.
