Current Films

Open­ing Program This split-screen work begins with total views as if from Mars, approach­ing the ground simul­ta­ne­ous­ly or alter­nate­ly from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Many people are build­ing a coun­try road with … read more

Due to unex­p­tect­ed cir­cum­stanced this event has to be cancelled We are very sorry for this!   On Feb­ru­ary 1st, 2021 Myan­mar Mil­i­tary under the lead­er­ship of Min Aung Hlaing staged … read more

Three mil­lion Afghan refugees live in Iran, often facing dis­crim­i­na­tion and endur­ing mostly pre­car­i­ous con­di­tions. Since the tight­en­ing of U.S. sanc­tions and the result­ing infla­tion, thou­sands of refugees are return­ing … read more

The rela­tion­ship that Varso­vians have with clams is sim­i­lar to the one that once joined canaries and miners. Both species can sense danger sooner than humans because they are much … read more

A busy train­ing center for domes­tic work­ers in Indra­mayu, West Java. Like mil­lions of Indone­sian rural women, Sukma, Meri, Muji and Tari dream of a better life and find­ing hap­pi­ness … read more

Even though China does not cel­e­brate Christ­mas, there are over 600 Christ­mas-dec­o­ra­tion fac­to­ries in Yiwu, China. They are often run as a family busi­ness and man­u­fac­ture year round, employ­ing people … read more

Work­ing to the rhythm of the aisles of a banal super­mar­ket, the employ­ees seem seized by the repet­i­tive tasks and their rou­tine. There is the team from the bakery sec­tion … read more

Fahed wants to change his life. It’s been almost twenty years that he left Alge­ria. At the time he was full of hope when he arrived at the British sea­port … read more

Like many African metrop­o­lis­es, the Ethiopi­an cap­i­tal Addis Ababa is grow­ing rapid­ly. The Oromo farm­ers in the sur­round­ing area call it Fin­finnee, and a part of the Great Rift Valley … read more

Fünf Jahre lang kämpft die Bürg­erini­tia­tive DoucheFLUX dafür, ein Gebäude zu finden, zu finanzieren und zu sanieren, wo die am meis­ten Benachteiligten der Stadt sich duschen und wo sie ärztliche … read more

In a lab­o­ra­to­ry-like setup, The View­ing Booth recounts a unique encounter between a film­mak­er and a viewer. The film explores the way we make mean­ings for non­fic­tion images, and how … read more

“Mama, I miss you so much,” begins a letter Alima writes to her mother. She is one of count­less Indone­sian women work­ing as a “babu,” or nanny, for a Dutch family in the former Dutch East Indies of the 1940s. The voice of a nar­ra­tor speak­ing to her dead mother floats through this com­pelling and insight­ful piece of cinema, rem­i­nis­cent of home movies and news­reels. In the days of colo­nial rule, it was common for Dutch fam­i­lies to make Super8 or 16mm films for friends and rel­a­tives to show them life in the colony: the chil­dren, the abun­dance of trop­i­cal fruits, the exotic idio­syn­crasies. The maids usu­al­ly played only a mar­gin­al role. From this per­spec­tive of rule and almost 500 pic­ture sources, con­trast­ed with the nar­ra­tion of many maids, Sandra Beerends com­piles her teach­ing tale on topics such as self-deter­mi­na­tion, wom­en’s rights and oppres­sion and expos­es the one-sid­ed­ness of the writ­ing of his­to­ry, as it is still taught in many places today.

Sandra Beerends from the Nether­lands is a screen­writer, pro­duc­er and direc­tor of fea­ture films and doc­u­men­taries. She works for the Dutch TV sta­tion NTR and runs her own film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny called “Beru­ang”. Her work includes the co-pro­duc­tion and script-edit­ing of KAUWBOY (2012, by Boudewi­jn Koole), and she wrote the script of the short ARIGATO (2012, R: Anielle Web­ster). THEY CALL ME BABU is her debut as a director.

Direc­tor, script: Sandra Beerends
Edit­ing: Ruben van der Hammen
Com­pos­er: Alex Simu
Voice Alima: Denise Aznam
Research: Dorette Schoote­mei­jer, Hans van den Berg
Line-Pro­duc­er: Celine Baggen Production,
dis­tri­b­u­tion: PVH Pieter van Hui­js­tee, Rudolf Kats  - rudolf@pvhfilm.nl

Out of five mil­lion Costa Ricans, just over 100,000 belong to the coun­try’s eight indige­nous groups. Under a 1977 law, 24 areas of the coun­try are pro­tect­ed as indige­nous ter­ri­to­ries. … read more

This film describes the cre­ation of a work of art in all its amaz­ing indi­vid­ual steps. We are in the west­ern moun­tains of Iran, the land of the Bakhtiaris. Wool … read more