In an upsweeping musical road trip, Dj Robert Soko, known for his Balkan Beats, searches for a new ‘sound of Europe’ with the help of refugee musicians. After the film, we’ll discuss his work together with director Sergej Kreso and Soko himself.

When Robert Soko fled the war in Yugoslavia as a teenager, he used Western music and rousing Balkan rhythms to mix cultures, and became a famous Balkan Beats DJ in Berlin and the European club scene. In the documentary Here We Move Here We Groove, Soko goes searching for people like himself: refugees who have left home behind, but still carry their unique sound and culture within them. With them, he starts making music.
Director Sergej Kreso, a refugee himself, follows the passionate journey of Robert Soko. This evening, we will discuss the film with Kreso and Soko; the encounters they have had, the musical boundaries that they have shattered, and the way the identity of Europe has changed.

Speakers

Sergej Kreso was born in Sarajevo and studied journalism. During the war in 1993, Kreso moved to the Netherlands, where he continued his work as a documentary filmmaker. He has made a trilogy about the war and is famous for films like Kaffeefahrt ins Krematorium and Vraem Luuj. He is also a musician and was part of multiple bands in Sarajevo.

Robert Soko left his native Bosnia in anticipation of the turmoil to come in the 1990s. After, he developed an interest in the local music he had firmly ignored while still there. But when he finally took to it, he really did take to it: he has made it a worldwide success through his brand the BalkanBeats!

Een grimmige blik op cultuurverschillen en vooroordelen. Is het echte liefde die de Belgische Gilbert voelt voor zijn Afrikaanse vriendinnen, of spelen andere motieven mee? De Belgische ex-para Gilbert lijkt gelukkig in Kenia. Hij geniet van het weer, de drank en looft de plaatselijke vrouwen: “Once you go black, you always go black.” Zijn vriendinnen vinden dat Gilbert een groot hart heeft en hen beter behandelt dan lokale mannen. Toch broeit er iets. Gilbert worstelt met een oorlogstrauma en drinkt veel. Wat zijn zijn echte motieven? Ook vooroordelen en cultuurverschillen staan in de weg. Zo komt op tragikomische maar vooral op pijnlijke wijze aan het licht hoe problematisch de relatie tussen Gilbert en de levenslustige Afrikaanse vrouwen is.

Het leven van een zwerfhond kan zwaar zijn, bijvoorbeeld als je geschopt wordt door een voorbijganger. Maar soms heb je geluk en vind je een overgebleven maaltijd met vlees, ren je eindeloos over het strand of huil je mee met een oproep tot het gebed. Dag in dag uit dwalen Zeytin, Nazar en puppy Kartal door de straten van Istanboel – de camera volgt hen op deze reis. Wanneer de zwerfhonden plezier lijken te hebben in het plagen van een kat, doet Stray denken aan documentairehit Kedi (2016), een eerbetoon aan de zwerfkatten van Istanboel. Het ene moment luisteren we mee met gesprekken van de inwoners van de Turkse stad, het andere moment bevinden de honden zich plotseling midden in een demonstratie. Een groep Syrische jongeren besluit voor puppy Kartal te zorgen, terwijl Zeytin en Nazar hun toevlucht zoeken bij de outcasts van de Turkse samenleving. Stray is een zintuigelijke mozaïekfilm door de ogen van zwerfhonden, vol inspirerende reflecties op vrijheid, solidariteit en naastenliefde.

Als regisseur Heddy Honigmann van haar dokter te horen krijgt dat ze niet lang meer te leven heeft, besluit ze een reis te maken langs plekken en mensen die voor haar een grote betekenis hebben.

Ze keert terug naar Peru, het land waar ze opgroeide en documentaire klassieker Metaal en Melancholie maakte. Ze deelt herinneringen met oude vrienden, ontmoet mensen die zij een stem gaf in haar documentaires, en bezoekt de plek waar het allemaal begon: haar geboortehuis. No Hay Camino is een hartverwarmende roadmovie over een van de grootste filmmakers die Nederland kent.

It’s summertime, busy weeks lie ahead for Ismail and Hakan, both employed at the Nashira Resort, a large, international, all-inclusive resort on the Turkish Riviera. 18-year-old Ismail has dropped out of school and dreams of becoming a hairdresser, but works in the hotel kitchen for now. Hakan, a 25-year-old college dropout, is the lifeguard at the resort’s aquapark. The two men hope their jobs will enable them to get ahead in life and at least learn English. Who knows, maybe they can go to the US someday.

Though they are obviously very different people, they have become good friends. Ismail has grown more self-assured through his work, whereas Hakan has begun to feel increasingly invisible and insignificant.

For two summers, the Belgian-Turkish director Volkan Üce has followed the two Turkish men trying to realize their dreams, even if just partly. The big question, however, is whether those dreams are actually worth all the effort.

Volkan Üce (1981, Belgium) is a self-taught fi lmmaker who studied and worked at the University of Antwerp. His fi rst feature-length documentary Displaced world premiered at DOK Leipzig 2017 and investigated the identity crisis of third-generation Turks growing up in the Low Countries. In his latest documentary, All-in, screening at WCA, Kurdish boys discover Western consumer society at an all-in hotel in Turkey.

So We Live (pre-film)

Rand Abou Fakher | België | 2020 | 15′ | Arabic spoken | English subtitles

A family living in a war torn country spends what seems to be a normal evening together. Their conversations shift between casual matters of daily life and survival.

What happens when traditional views on the position of women clash with the modern way of life embodied by social media? This is what Egyptian director Ayten Amin addresses in her film, which she co-wrote and produced.

On the bus, a young student is telling one passenger about her fiancé being a soldier in the army, next she is chatting to someone else about her fiancé being a doctor. Both stories are untrue. 19-year-old Souad from Zagazig, a small town in Egypt’s Nile Delta, leads a complicated double life: her life in the virtual world of Facebook is filled with fun and excitement, it is the life she would love to have, but in the real world she has to adapt to the traditional views of her conservatively religious parents. It all leads to an inevitable collision, particularly when she can no longer hide her fantasy world from her family. The consequences are immense, especially for her younger sister Rabab.

Ayten Amin (1978, Egypt) studied film criticism and film in Cairo. Her graduation film Her Man screened at Clermont-Ferrand, among other festivals. She co-directed the documentary Tahrir 2011, which premiered at Venice. Her feature debut, Villa 69, screened in Abu Dhabi, Malmö and Cannes. Souad is a hybrid ‘documentary fiction film’ exploring the lives of two teenage sisters in Egypt’s Nile Delta.

The images of Cubans venturing across the sea to Florida in rickety boats are still etched in our memories. Since that route has been closed, Cubans who no longer see a future in their own country have to travel a very different route to reach the United States. They fly to Guyana and then trudge north via Brazil or Venezuela and subsequently Colombia. It is a dangerously risky journey leading through dense jungle. Many find themselves stranded in Panama, eventually ending up as illegal immigrants in a refugee camp in Panama City. Director Marcel Beltrán, who was a guest as a jury member at WCA in 2018, visited the refugees there to record their story. He discovered that many of them had filmed their own journeys. In his documentary he combines his own recordings in the camp with the at times shocking images made by the refugees themselves. The result is equally poignant and gut-wrenching.

In her previous, critically acclaimed, award-winning film By the Time it Gets Dark, Thai director Anocha Suwichakornpong already experimented freely with ways of storytelling. During the last Berlinale her new film Jai jumlong had its world premiere, a film in which she goes one step further: the narrative takes second place to the film’s atmosphere. An atmosphere she creates with stunning black-and-white images, all equally beautifully lit, while the sound design also makes viewing the film very special. Four friends in their twenties travel to Kanchanaburi in western Thailand to visit the museum dedicated to the construction of the Burma Railway in WWII, only to discover that the museum is closed for renovations. They still manage to have a good time in the house they rented. They turn out to be actors performing scenes from a play. Back in Bangkok, they re-enact their experience.

Anocha Swuichakornpon (1976, Thailand) is a scriptwriter, director and owner of production house Electric Eel Films. Her short Graceland (2006) was the first Thai short in Official Selection at Cannes and her feature debut, Mundane History (2009), picked up numerous awards. She co-directed Krabi, 2562 – a blend of documentary and camp – with Ben Rivers. Jai Jumlong is her fourth feature .

Young Jin-ah, a North Korean refugee, has completed her social adjustment training in South Korea, but she still feels lost in her small studio in Seoul. Her main objective is to earn enough money to get her father from China to South Korea. So she picks up any job she can find. She lands a cleaning gig at a boxing gym and soon becomes fascinated by the boxing sport. Her enthusiasm does not go unnoticed: Tae-soo, the gym director’s assistant, recognizes her potential and urges her to take up the sport herself. She remains hesitant, but when her money troubles increase after an incident, she decides to rise to the challenge.

Fighter is not a film about a sports talent eventually reaching the top, as the cliché would have it, but rather a character study of a woman, excellently played by Lim Seong-mi, for whom keeping her head up is a daily struggle in itself.

Jéro Yun (1980, South Korea) studied art, photography and film in France. His short documentary Promesse won the Grand Prize at the Asiana International Short Film Festival; his feature documentary Mrs. B. A North Korean Woman was awarded in Moscow and Zurich. His short Hitchhiker screened in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, and his debut feature Beautiful Days opened the 2018 Busan International Film Festival.  

Hardworking handyman Mofe wants to get out of Lagos. He dreams of living in Spain and is already well on his way to achieving that dream: he has a passport and has had his name changed to “Sanchez”. A death in the family puts him in financial trouble, as he has to pay for the coffin, but lacks the money to do so.

Rosa lives in a different part of the city – a hairdresser by day, a bar worker at night. She and her younger sister Grace too dream of a life elsewhere, in their case in Italy, and time is somewhat pressing as Grace is pregnant. Where to find the money though, or the right papers? Rosa gets involved with the wrong people. In their feature debut, twins Arie and Chuko Esiri present a true picture of everyday life in Lagos, a city where the road to a better life is fraught with many obstacles. A comparison with the work of the Dardenne brothers is easily made – and rightly so.