Country:Netherlands

Director:Victor Vroegindeweij

Program:Parallel Youth

Summary:

11 year old Chanaika, who lives with her mother in the colourful Afrikaaner neighbourhood of Rotterdam, wants to perform in an annual summer carnival with her best friends. We follow this eloquent young lady during dance classes and while trying on clothes for the parade with her pals. Chainaika’s live seems cheerful, but she has not had an easy ride. Recently, she personally kicked her father out of the house because he hit her mother.

Country:Netherlands

Director:Hillie Molenaar and Joop Van Wijk

Program:World Parallel

Summary:

Hillie Molenaar & Joop van Wijk discover East Africa's largest and most modern newspaper, The Daily Nation, Kenya's only independent source of information. In Kenya's still-developing nation, corruption is a force felt everywhere. In spite of this The Daily Nation struggles to maintain its independence. Its committed staff provide the Kenyan people with stories that make an impact on their life and remind them of the value of an independent press.

Country:Netherlands

Director:Hillie Molenaar and Joop Van Wijk

Program:World Parallel

Summary:

In 1994, at an intersection of roads from Uganda to Tanzania and from Kenya via Rwanda to Zaire, some half a million refugees from Tutsi-Hutu violence streamed in to create boom town called Benaco. The newcomers--whose roles in the Rwandan genocide are unknown--mean big business and a wave of petty crime. A single white wedding dress, rented out to refugee brides, becomes an emblem of innocence and hope that is long gone from the drawn faces of Rwandan orphans.

Country:Netherlands

Director:Frans Zwartjes

Program:Multiplying Parallels

Summary:

One of the most remarkable filmmakers from Holland, Frans Zwartjes created a singular body of work in the late sixties and seventies that typically placed strange mannequin-like figures, seemingly imagined yet clearly with a life of their own, in simple situations that become inbued with angst like a slow spreading stain which ultimately engulfs them in waves of arousal and menace.

Country:Netherlands

Director:Jacqueline van Vugt

Program:Contemporary World Cinema

Summary:

Ami Diarra sees it as her mission to educate the residents of a mining town on Aids and organizes an informal meeting on the disease. Because of her respected position as a griot- a West African musician considered to be protector and narrator of the oral tradition and history –she succeeds in reaching many people. Unfortunately, the authorities will not take her seriously, as we witness when she asks the local health centre to support her campaign. Apparently they will only work with NGOs.

Country:Netherlands

Director:Femke and Ilse Van Velzen

Program:Contemporary World Cinema

Summary:

During the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s seven year war, more then 80.000 women and girls were raped. Fighting the Silence tells the story of ordinary women and men struggling to change their society: one that prefers to blame victims rather than prosecute rapists. Survivors tell of the brutality they experienced. Husbands talk of the pressures that led them to abandon their wives. A father explains why he has given up on his daughter’s future.

Country:Netherlands

Director:Mirjam Van Veelen

Program:Contemporary World Cinema

Summary:

In this unusual film, several genres are mixed together. The documentary parts comprise fictional elements and the fictional parts remain close to reality. The film tells the story of a dramatic disappearance. On 15 November 1977, the Japanese school girl Megumi disappeared off the face of the earth as if by magic. Thirty years later, the family and the acquaintances of the girl are still stunned. In the meantime it has become apparent that Megumi was kidnapped by spies to North Korea with several others to teach North Korean spies to speak fluent and natural Japanese.

Country:Netherlands

Director:Arda Nederveen

Program:Contemporary World Cinema

Summary:

This film is about Ethiopian and Somali domestic workers in Yemen, and in particular about the ways in which they survive under difficult circumstances. While the employment of migrant domestic workers in the oil producing countries of the Arabian Peninsula is well known, few people know that also in a poor country like Yemen mainly migrant women are employed as domestics. Why is there a demand for paid domestic labour in Yemen? Who fills this demand? What are the living and working conditions of Ethiopian and Somali women in Yemen? And how do they survive?